Four qualifying wrestlers represented the school at the Feb. 21 – 22 state tournament.

Going into the championship, junior Ben Lance was nervous.

“There was a lot of pressure behind it and just the whole tournament for me overall,” Lance said.

Lance didn’t do as well as he had hoped, finishing sixth overall.

“My first two matches I wrestled pretty well, but after that it was a pretty bad tournament for me overall,” Lance said.

While he wants to work on “getting off bottom” and changing his attacks, Lance finds balancing wrestling with school work challenging.

“It’s really hard to balance it with school, because you have three hour practices, so a lot of just late nights doing homework for calculus,” Lance said.

Contrary to Lance, senior Connor Voelker was not nervous, as he had been to states previously.

Voelker wanted “just to place” at states; however, he exceeded his hopes.

“I won my first match, so that’s always good,” Voelker said. He also took sixth in his weight class.

Voelker plans to extend his career outside of high school.

“I’ll probably just go to JUCO college for wrestling and then transfer out to D1,” Voelker said.

Along with Voelker, junior Ronnel Wilson was pleased with his performance.

“I honestly went into states just hoping to place, and then I ended up being a state finalist, which is really crazy,” Wilson said.

He took second place in his weight class.

Wilson said he wrestled the hardest he had all year because he “knew what was on the line.”

Wilson was also nervous going into the championship but was content in the end.

“I was really happy that I made it this far and was really happy that I made my coaches and teammates proud,” Wilson said.