With the 2023-24 wrestling postseason quickly approaching, the Marshall High School program took advantage of one last opportunity to sharpen up. The Cardinals headed to Lake Mills High School on Saturday, Feb. 3 to participate in the 2024 Capitol Conference meet.
They ran into some stiff competition there. Marshall finished in seventh place of the nine participating teams with a total team score of 67. Lodi won the event with a team score of 285, followed by Sugar River in second with 237 and Waterloo in third with 148. The Cardinals of Marshall boasted some strong individual performances to take some positive momentum into the postseason.
Their top performer was senior Tucker Cobb in the 138 lbs. weight class. For the third time in his career, he finished as conference runner-up, having also done it at 126 lbs. as a junior and 120 lbs. as a sophomore. Cobb entered as the No. 2 seed and quickly worked his way to the championship match with a pair of pin wins, 2:29 in the quarterfinals and 1:30 in the semifinals.
He was up against Sugar River’s Mason Mau with first place on the line. Mau leapt out to a 6-2 lead in the first period, but Cobb continued battling. He nabbed six points in the second period and was the only one to score in the third, but he ultimately fell in a 14-8 decision to take second place.
Marshall also got a third place finish out of Miles Zimmerman in the 113 lbs. bracket. The weight class only had three participants this season, and Zimmerman fell to eventual runner-up Zech Bair of Sugar River in the semifinals. This left him as the odd man out with a third place finish.
The Cardinals also got a pair of fourth place finishes out of senior Kody Finke (144 lbs.) and junior Turner Cobb (165 lbs.). Finke entered as the No. 2 seed in his weight class and, after a bye, took a 20-1 tech fall loss to a Sugar River wrestler in the semifinals. Knocked down to the consolation bracket, he battled back with a 15-7 major decision win over a Lakeside Lutheran wrestler. Up in the third place match, he accepted a 10-3 decision loss to a Waterloo wrestler for fourth place.
Cobb had to battle for a shot at the third place match as he was knocked out in the quarterfinals with a 14-2 major decision loss to Lodi’s Tyler Ripp. He rebounded by pinning a Columbus wrestler in 56 seconds and followed that with a 9-2 decision win over a Cambridge. Now in the third place match, Cobb had a rematch with Ripp. Ripp emerged victorious again, this time with a pin at 3:38 to give Cobb fourth place.
Elsewhere at the conference meet, freshman Trevor Rasmussen (285 lbs.) finished fifth, senior Mikail Alexander-Taylor (215 lbs.) and freshman Ryan Braun (120 lbs.) both earned sixth, and freshman Chase Stuntebeck (150 lbs.) turned in a seventh place effort.
Now, the Cardinals turn their attention towards the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA) state tournament. Waterloo High School will serve as a host site for both WIAA regionals and sectionals this season. Regionals kick off on Saturday, Feb. 10. Qualified teams and wrestlers will return to Waterloo High School on Tuesday, Feb. 13 for sectionals.
The 2024 WIAA individual state wrestling tournament will be hosted at the UW-Madison Kohl Center from Thursday, Feb. 22 through Saturday, Feb. 24. Team state will take place the following weekend, Friday, Mar. 1 and Saturday, Mar. 2 at the UW-Madison Field House.
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2024 Capitol Conference meet team scores
1. Lodi, 285
2. Sugar River, 237
3. Waterloo, 148
4. Lake Mills, 130
5. Cambridge, 100
6. Lakeside Lutheran 86
7. Marshall, 67
8. Poynette, 52.5
9. Columbus, 34
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