Following Thursday’s pinfest in Rhinelander, the Hatchet wrestlers jumped on a late-breaking chance to enter half their team in Saturday’s D.C. Everest Tournament and wound up seventh with the small squad.

“I was pretty happy with the way we wrestled,” THS coach Bob Garrou said. “It was quite a turnaround from Thursday. Saturday we were super-aggressive. If we could have brought our whole team, we could have maybe won it.”

The meet had eight openings, but only in six weight classes and THS could only score once in a class. So they only got their top points where Payton DuPlayee went 1st and Austin Bellile was 4th at 215, and where Mitch McAllister was 2nd and Colton Butler was 4th at 160.

Kevin Zurfluh (103) also won his class, Larry Hendzel (125) and Chris Cole (171) placed 3rd, and Turner Wegener (112) ranked 4th.

Pulaski took the meet over D.C.E. 457-339, and THS scored 224.

Hodag heap

At Rhinelander, 11 of 14 matches ended by fall, and an additional tech fall and forfeit meant just one match lasted the duration. Tomahawk pulled out a 48-32 win. Six matches took 1:30 or less.

“It was a terrible dual meet on our part,” Garrou said. “It’s amazing we got out of there with a win. We lost to kids that were 2-16. The good thing is we learn more on a night like that than we do blowing someone out.”

Collecting pins for the Hatchets were: McAllister (152, 2:32), Bellile (189, 1:17), DuPlayee (215, 2:11), Zurfluh (103, 1:30), Wegener (112, :42), Hendzel (1:04) and Austin Story (125, 5:12).

Johann Carstensen (145) received a forfeit.

Cole (171) dropped a 13-11 decision and David Brostowitz (130) lost a 21-4 tech fall. Butler (160, 1:27), Nate Kuehn (285, 5:39), Sam Guzik (135, :57) and Brandon Larkin (140, 2:22) were pinned.