Wartburg competes well against larger programs

Wartburg's Byron Tate and John Helgerson made their mark on the 48th Midlands Championships on Wednesday. Both opened 2-0, advancing to last night's quarterfinals. It's their first appearance at the Midlands.

Wartburg co-head coach Eric Keller said the duo sacrifice their break to prepare.

“They jumped at the chance,” Keller said. “These two have been excited about Midlands for a while.”

Helgerson, a two-time NCAA Division III All-American and national runner-up last year at heavyweight, dropped Nebraska's fifth-seeded Tucker Lane, 4-3, before beating Iowa State's Kyle Simonson, 3-1, to move into the quarterfinals. It also avenged a loss to Simonson earlier this season at the Harold Nichols Open and the 215-pound state Class 2A championship when Helgerson was a senior at North Fayette and Simonson wrestled for Algona

“They have a little bit of history there,” Keller said. “That was a match Helgerson was really geared up for, and he went out there and executed.

“That guy's wrestling with a lot of confidence right now. The bottom line with Helgerson is there's a guy that does everything you tell him to do and goes out and executes. He never thinks twice about it.”

Tate, a former Clinton state champion and the 2010 197-pound Division III NCAA champ, beat Mike Wagner of Rutgers, 6-3, and then scored a late reversal to win a wild match, 13-11, over Alex Polizzi of Northwestern.