Early pins propel Prairie

By Jeff Hare

Correspondent

CEDAR RAPIDS - Sometimes you just need to make a statement, and the Cedar Rapids Prairie wrestling team did just that Wednesday night with an overwhelming 48-25 victory over North Scott in a Class 3A regional dual meet at Prairie High School.

The Hawks set the tone early with a pin from Trent Schulte at 195 pounds in the opening bout, then got another in the next match from Andrew Netolicky at 220 pounds.

After a forfeit at 106 pounds, Prairie picked up two more pins from Josh Wenger at 113 pounds, and Chris Walters at 120 pounds.

That flurry of falls propelled the Hawks to the state duals tournament next Wednesday at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines.

“It was nice to have some early pins, which gave us a nice lead,” said Prairie Coach Blake Williams. “Everybody did pretty much what we wanted, which allowed us to wrestle some of our extra guys in later matches and get them some experience.”

Prairie was clearly the aggressor in the early going, scoring the first takedown in nine of the 12 contested matches (there were two forfeits, one for each team).

“We really want to start the match with a quick score, and I am glad we were able to do that,” Williams said. “The other thing that I was happy with is that we were getting points late in the period as time ran out.

“We push keeping up our intensity for the entire period, and tonight I thought we did that.”

Next up for the No. 6-ranked Hawks is a Class 3A district meet Saturday at Cedar Rapids Kennedy that will decide qualifiers for next week's traditional state tournament.

“We have been pushing the team concept for the past few weeks,” Williams said. “Now we go to the wrestling room and work on the individual skills.”

Williams said there is a lot of work to do.

“We need to hit it hard, and try to qualify as many as we can to take to Des Moines,” he said. “This weekend is what it comes down to.”