An easy decisionDeWitt named ‘Most Outstanding Wrestler’ at NCAA Central Region Qualifier

by Drew Brashaw | asst. sports editorJunior Nick Steger and senior Steven

DeWitt are headed to Hershey, PA, for the NCAA Championships next Friday. They came very close to having company.

While Steger’s and DeWitt’s success shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s followed Duhawk wrestling this season, the NCAA Central Region qualify-ing tournament — hosted by Loras at the Dubuque Five Flags Center on Saturday — featured its share of unexpected excite-ment.

For DeWitt, Saturday unfolded precise-ly as planned.

The 5th-ranked senior steamrolled his way through the 157-pound bracket and punched his ticket to Nationals as a Re-gional Champion. After receiving a first-round bye, DeWitt started his day with a 12-4 major decision over Cornell’s Aaron Engle in the quarterfinal round. In the semifinals, DeWitt defeated Reed VanAnrooy of Luther, the eventual third-place qualifier. DeWitt staved off VanAnrooy’s takedown attempt in the waning mo-ments of the 3rd period to secure the 3-2 decision and silence the otherwise rau-cous contingent of Norse fans in attendance.

The final round in the 157-pound bracket featured a rematch from just two weeks earlier, as DeWitt squared off against Wart-burg’s Drew Waggenhoffer in the championship bout. Just like at the dual meet on Friday the 13th, the match-up ended with DeWitt’s hand being raised. His 5-2 decision capped a perfor-mance that earned DeWitt outstanding wrestler of the tournament honors, a dis-tinction his coach considers an understatement.

“I think he’s the most outstanding wrestler in the country,” said Duhawks’ head coach Randy Steward following the award presen-tation.

For Steger, the road to Hershey took an unexpect-ed detour.

After earning decisions

over Dubuque’s Stephen Rosenburg and Coe’s Luke Kremer in the first two rounds of the 141-pound bracket, Steger suffered his first defeat of the season, surrendering a pin fall to Buena Vista’s Nashid Barrow halfway through the third period of their semifinal bout.

“I got pretty mad at myself,” said Ste-ger. “The whole tournament kind of went up in flames.”

If Steger was mad at himself, he took it out on his opponents in the wrestlebacks, pinning Rosenburg and Wartburg’s Kaz Onoo to grab third place and a trip to Na-tionals.

Sophomore Greg Vance came within heartbeats of joining DeWitt and Steger on their trip to Pennsylvania. The 165-pound Dubuque Wahlert product was a pinning machine on Saturday, scoring 1st period falls in each of his four victories. Vance was knocked to the consolation bracket by eventual first-place finisher Andrew Steiert of Wartburg in the quarterfinal round, and lost an overtime heart-breaker to Luther’s Blake Letney in the third-place match, falling just short of qualifying for

the NCAA Championships.133lb. first-year Michael Triplett also

came up short in his third-place match, losing a 10-2 major decision to Nathan Shank of Cornell.

More noteworthy than Triplett’s per-formance in his final match are the cir-cumstances which brought him there. After advancing to the semifinals with a hiccup-quick pin fall victory over Univer-sity of the Ozarks’ Trevor Lister, and a 4-3 decision over Central’s Aaron Anderson, Triplett was bounced from the champi-onship bracket by eventual winner Con-nor Campo of Wartburg. Trailing 14-2 in the third period of his first wrestleback, Triplett tossed Coe’s Brady Ruden with an underhook and stuck him for the im-probable comeback victory.

“I thought to myself, ‘keep calm and fight back, and you can win the match,” said Triplett. “The third period came, and that’s what happened. I kept calm and I fought back, and I ended up on top.”

Junior Malcolm Watson at 197 pounds and sophomore Evan Weaver at 149 pounds each finished in fifth place.

“We had seven guys wrestling at the end of the day, and I was pleased with that,” said Steward. “I think we’ve got some good mojo going on, and I think the future bodes well.”

While the rest of the team may begin looking to the future, the focus re-mains squarely on the pres-ent for DeWitt and Steger.

“For both of them, their goal ever since they came to Loras has been to win it, so I’m not going to be shy about saying it,” Steward said. “That’s why they’re doing this.”

“To accomplish my goal, I have to come back to the practice room with a new mindset,” Said DeWitt. “I had some good wins, but these aren’t the All-Ameri-cans I’m going to be facing (at Nationals).”

Steger will look to use his first loss of the year as moti-vation for Nationals.

“I’m going to work a lot harder this week,” Steger said. “I’m going to run that much harder, lift that much more weight. Hopefully it all pays off at the end.”

8 The Lorian March 5, 2015 Sports

NCaa Central region Qualifier results

(Top-3 wrestlers qualify)

125 Results1st place match: Jake Agnitsch (Wart-burg) over Daniel Page (Central) (Dec 3-2). 3rd place match: Jan Rosenburg (Coe) over Jimmy Panozzo (Augustana) (Fall 2:48). 5th place match: Scott Smith (Cornell) over Joey Cisneros (Dubuque) (Dec 2-1).

133 Results1st place match: Connor Campo (Wart-burg) over Evan Obert (Luther) (Dec 11-4). 3rd place match: Nathan Shank (Cor-nell) over Michael Triplett (Loras) (MD 10-2). 5th place match: Brady Ruden (Coe) over Brendan Gould (Augustana) (Dec 2-0).

141 Results1st place match: Drew Van Anrooy (Luther) over Nashid Barrow (Buena Vista) (Dec 8-5). 3rd place match: Nick Steger (Loras) over Kaz Onoo (Wartburg) (Fall 3:24). 5th place match: Stephen Rosenburg (Dubuque) over Jared Brathor (Cornell) (Dec 8-4).

149 Results1st place match: Kenneth Martin (Wart-burg) over Dakota Gray (Luther) (Fall 1:01). 3rd place match: Trevor Engle (Cornell) over Jonathan Melton (Simp-son) (SV-1 6-4). 5th place match: Evan Weaver (Loras) over Josh Donkle (Coe) (Dec 11-6).

157 Results1st place match: Steven DeWitt (Loras) over Drew Wagenhoffer (Wartburg) (Dec 5-2). 3rd place match: Reed Van Anrooy (Luther) over Aaron Engle (Cornell) 18-19, (Dec 8-1). 5th place match: Brian Travis (Dubuque) over Seth Shatto (Buena Vista) (Dec 8-5).

165 Results1st place match: Andrew Steiert (Wart-burg) over Farai Sewera (Coe) (SV-2 5-3). 3rd place match: Blake Letney (Luther) over Greg Vance (Loras) (TB-1 2-1). 5th place match: Michael Maksimovic (Cornell) over Manuel Mendoza (Dubuque)

(For.).

174 Results1st place match: Brent Hamm (Cornell) over Brandon Welter (Wartburg) (Dec 3-2). 3rd place match: Ryan Harrington (Coe) over Justin Kreiter (Luther) (Dec 6-2). 5th place match: Elton Turnage (Dubuque) over Jordan Richardson (Augustana)

(For.).

184 Results1st place match: Devin Peterson (Wartburg) over Ryan Sheldon (Coe) (Dec 4-0). 3rd place match: Jayden DeVilbiss (Luther) over Thomas Reyhons (Augusta-na) (Fall 1:45). 5th place match: Zach Moss (Central) over Awais Arain (Loras)

(Dec 8-2).

197 Results 1st place match: Gerard Roman (Wart-burg) over Matt Seabold (Central) (Dec 12-7). 3rd place match: Donnie Horner (Coe) over Aburough Abegesah (Cornell) (Dec 10-3). 5th place match: Malcolm Watson (Loras) over Christos Giatras

(Augustana) (Dec 12-6).

285 Results1st place match: Benjamin Nagle (Wart-burg) over Jack Seaman (Augustana) (Dec 7-2). 3rd place match: Conner Herman (Luther) over Creighton Fox (Coe) (Fall 4:51). 5th place match: Dan Howell (Dubuque) over Jay Pike (Central) (Dec 6-1).

Community member calls for change in Lorian leadership

Editor’s note: On Feb. 26, 2015, the Lorian ran an editorial titled “8 things I learned as a sportswriter.” The following is a response to that editorial. To read the Feb. 26 issue and many others, visit www.issuu.com/thelorian.

Someone needs to say something. I guess that someone is me.

While I’ve never written for the paper myself, I’ve always been a loyal reader of the Lorian. Colin and Mary have done an outstanding job over the past three years, as did Nick Joos and others before them. That being said, there’s been a cancer growing over the past two years — a cancer whose self-entitled narcissism has been ruining this paper. I’m talking, of course, about your so-called “sports editor.”

Last week, he wrote an editorial titled “8 things I learned as a sportswriter.”

Jesus Christ ... where do I start?How about the hypocrisy? This

comes from the guy who’s constantly bitching about the laziness of Buzzfeed “listicles,” but what, it’s OK when HE’S the one writing them? The only difference between this guy and a Buzzfeed contributor is his superiority complex. He’s as lazy and incompetent as everyone else on that site. He’s just too delusional to realize it.

Secondly, who the hell does he think he is? John Clayton!? He’s been a sportswriter for all of five minutes and suddenly he’s handing down life lessons like some mountain-dwelling yogi? The arrogance of this guy!

I swear — arrogance oughta be his middle name. I bet he thinks he’s SOOO interesting. Oh, you have a blog, do you? You write for a big fancy newspaper?? Oooh, look at me, I have a part-time job!

Get over yourself. Typical writer, am I right?

Completely obsessed with perpetuating his own self-importance. What kind of person has a blog, anyway? Think of the narcissism behind that decision — to just start posting things online, assuming people will read them. I bet he just sits there, staring at the screen, letting each new page view feed his already over-blown ego. It’s sad how he defines his self-worth through the approval of others. What a loser.

And has he written anything insightful lately? Not even close! His recent articles essentially amount to insane, profanity-laced diatribes about nothing. All he does is hate on things. What’s that? The majority of people like something? Well we can’t have that! Let me spend the next 750 words making abortion jokes and swearing in ALL CAPS!

The fact of the matter is — this guy needs to go. He’s been given too much freedom. He’s been given too much influence. He was probably hugged too much as a child. Are we really going to let the guy who walks around wearing polo’s in a shallow attempt to distract women from his lack of personality write for our paper!? This is our college. It’s time to make a stand. The people have spoken.

Sincerely,~ Ryan Graham

community member

photo courtesy of Jim Naprstek/Duhawks.ComSenior Steven DeWitt gets crowned champion of the 157-pound division in Saturday’s NCAA Central Region Qualifier Meet at the Five Flags Center after a 5-2 decision over Wartburg’s Drew Waggenhoffer. DeWitt was named ‘Most Outstanding Wrestler of the Tournament.’