The Minnesota wrestling team grabbed eight placewinners at the Kaufman-Brand Open Saturday in Omaha, Neb.
Northern Illinois
what: Wrestling
when: 10 a.m., Saturday
where: Northern Quad, Rochester
The top-ranked Gophers competed without Jayson Ness, Dustin Schlatter, Mack Reiter and Roger Kish due to the NWIC All-Star Classic taking place today in Oregon, but Minnesota was still able to earn two titles.
Seniors Manuel Rivera (141) and C.P. Schlatter (157) won their respective weight classes for the third straight year.
Rivera upped his season record to 4-0 by dropping Wyoming’s Carter Downing in the championship match.
Schlatter earned two 10-3 decisions and also improved his record to 4-0 while winning his respective bracket.
The Gophers will open up dual meet competition Saturday in Rochester.
–Mark Remme
Divers have good outing
Minnesota divers made their mark in the Indiana Invitational meet this past weekend as they took the top spots in the competition.
Junior Cole Young won the 10-meter platform event for his fifth diving title of the season. Young set a personal best in the event with a score of 365.45 and was just five points from the school record.
Coach Jason Baumann said Young eclipsed his previous best by nearly 30 points.
Freshman Drew Brown continued a strong first season as he finished fifth in the platform, third in the three meter, and seventh in the one-meter event.
“Drew and Cole had very good weekends,” Baumann said. Brown and Young complement each other well, and their abilities have each other trying to outperform one another, he said.
“They push each other in practice. Cole does a good job and Drew wants to do a better job,” Baumann said.
Training together in practice has helped as well because both perform similar dives.
“We’ll be doing a lot of the same dives and we’ll feed off of what each other is doing well. It helps to have that bench mark,” Young said.
Meanwhile the women divers held their own at the meet with the sophomores standing out.
Sophomore Jacqueline Schroeder, Big Ten diver of the week, continued diving well and finished second in the platform event for the women with a score of 225.60. Schroeder led a Gophers contingent that placed three divers in the top 10 spots.
Sophomore Alex Barstad finished fourth with a score of 213.20 while fellow sophomore Hillary Provo finished ninth.
“We’re really psyched to see that come together,” Baumann said.
Entering the meet, Baumann said he wanted to give his young team some more experience before they compete against the rest of the Big Ten and the Indiana Invitational would help give the team the experience needed.
The men’s and women’s teams have a total of eight divers and of that eight only one is an upperclassman, so experience becomes an important part of their success.
“It is physically fatiguing and really challenging to get mentally prepared for that,” Baumann said.
The meet allowed the team to go against some Big Ten divers and they began to see what the rest of the season will look like.
“We gained experience with real competition,” Schroeder said. “It was an eye opener to what to expect, what it takes to make the semifinals and the final.”
Minnesota will travel to Ohio State in two weeks as they conclude the first-semester schedule.
–Nick Gerhardt
