A few weeks ago I wrote that it was a great night to be a Husky when the Jackson County Central wrestling team opened the Section 3A team tournament with a win at home in the main gym at JCC High School at the same time the boys basketball was securing the number one seed for its sub-section tournament with a win down the hall in the auxiliary gym.
Last night topped that. By a lot.
Three JCC three wrestlers won state championships and a total of seven Huskies made their way to the medal stand at the end of the state Class 1A tournament at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul.
Nolan Ambrose (132) won his third state title and he’ll return next season although nothing is guaranteed. We’ll address that with Nolan and Coach Nate Hanson in newsletters that will follow in the next day or two (or possibly three).
Thomas Freking (138) and Caleb Vancura (220) closed out their outstanding careers with wins and a state title.
Also, Cameron Scholten (285) placed second, Logan Butzon (145) and Matt Haley (195) were both third and Isaiah Rodriguez (152) finished sixth.
Of course, it almost seems like it was light years ago but it had only been two days since the Huskies won their second straight team title.
Meanwhile last night, the top-seeded Jackson County Central boys basketball team survived and advanced, beating eighth-seeded St. James Area 62-58 in the opening round of the Section 3AA South Sub-Section tournament back home in Jackson.
Erik Hesebeck had a double-double of 25 points and 11 rebounds for JCC. Kudos to him as I saw him in St. Paul supporting the wrestlers Thursday. It’s not easy to miss a practice two days before the start of your postseason but that’s a great problem to have when you have classmates and schoolmates excelling at their activities.
My apologies upfront. I’m sure there were more basketball players at the X, but I remember seeing Erik.
But I digress.
Roman Voss had 15 points, Travis Rogotzke nine and Weston Rowe eight last night.
The basketball Huskies will now play Redwood Valley in the sub-section semifinals at 6 p.m. Thursday in Windom. Pipestone and Montevideo play the late game, with the winners advancing to play Saturday in Marshall.
There have also been several local products competing or coaching in Iowa, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Texas and British Columbia in recent days. We’ll try to get to those as we can in the coming days.
I have a lengthy list of topics to cover and a lot of information to sort through.
If you’re not a subscriber yet, there’s a couple of places here to solve that. And it’s all free right now.
One more thing before I get to the real business at hand and start telling stories about our great student-athletes and coaches, I did miss out on spending time with our youngest granddaughter as she spent the day with her grandma and auntie yesterday.
Here we were at Christmas. Lainey Lynn is the shorter one. Looking forward to catching up with sometime soon, but grandpa did have a pretty good time in St. Paul.
On a separate topic, if you don’t follow me on Twitter perhaps you should. Had a lot of fun there last night. It’s @sportsdr44
Look for plenty of newsletters over the next few days. Looking for an approach as to how many to write. And probably of greater importance with all of that and a three-hour drive home….when to write them.