Creese and Lunn finish second
The Shakopee wrestling team sent six individuals to state and four of them came home with medals.
Senior Alex Lloyd won his third state championship (see page 14) while sophomores Paxton Creese and Ben Lunn finished in second place and senior Sam Webster finished in third place.
Creese would get to the 106 pound championship match before falling 6-3 to undefeated Joey Thompson of Maple Grove.
Thompson scored the opening takedown for a 2-0 lead but Creese was able to quickly reverse him to tie it up at 2-2.
Thompson earned an escape point just before the end of the first period for a 3-2 lead.
The score would stay at 3-2 for the entire second period as Thompson rode Creese out for the entire two minutes.
Creese allowed Thompson up to start third to put the score at 4-2. Thompson earned another takedown midway through the third period for a 6-2 lead. Creese cut it to 6-3 with an escape but couldn’t score anymore on Thompson.
Creese reached the finals with a pin of Minneapolis South’s Daniel Avre in the first round, a pin of Charlie Dojan of Irondale in the quarterfinals and a 6-4 overtime win against Winona’s Ryan Henningson in the semifinals.(Henningson defeated Creese earlier in the year at the Shakopee Invite.)
Lunn was next on the mat for the Sabers as he took on Forest Lake’s No. 1 ranked Derrick Cardinal in the 113-pound state championship match.
Cardinal earned two first period takedowns of Lunn to build up a 4-1 lead.
Lunn earned an escape in the second period and takedown in the third to tie the match at 4-4 but he wasn’t able to keep Cardinal down as he earned an escape and held on to top Lunn 5-4 for the title.
Lunn, seeded third, defeated Northfield’s Jake Messner 9-4 in the opening round and than avenged a loss he suffered in the team competition in the quarterfinals.
In the team competition on Thursday night, Lunn lost to St. Michael-Albertville’s Brandon Pysk 9-5.
In the individual quarterfinals, Lunn got some revenge as he beat Psyk 7-4 to advance to the semifinals against East Ridge seventh-grader Ryder Rogotske.
Lunn defeated Rogotske 5-1 to advance to the finals.
As for Webster, he reached the semifinals in the 145 pound bracket before battling back to earn a third place medal.
Webster reached the semifinals after a pair of 5-4 victories against Little Falls Gabe Nagel and Anoka’s Scott Springer.
In the semis, he lost to eventual state champion Nate Larson of Apple Valley 4-3 to be sent to the consolation bracket.
In the consolation bracket, Webster defeated White Bear Lake’s TJ Turinske 6-3 to advance to the third place match where he defeated Dallas Hooper of St. Cloud Tech 3-2.
Shakopee’s two other individuals Joey Johnson and Jack Casey both lost their only state individual tournament matches.
Johnson lost to St. Michael-Albertville’s Wyatt Lidberg 8-1 in the 170-pound bracket and Casey lost 7-0 to Eagan’s Alex Wick in the 182-pound bracket.