Kasson-Mantorville grabs second straight Section 1AA team wrestling title, advances to state
Feb. 18—ROCHESTER — Cole Glazier's preparation for Saturday's Section 1AA team wrestling tournament included not thinking about wrestling.
Really, that's Glazier's routine before every dual — even the ones that determine a team state berth.
"I put more effort into staying calm," he said. "Before (a dual), I'm sitting down, just taking deep breaths, just hanging out."
Then, the Kasson-Mantorville senior star steps on the mat with his plan in his head, ready to execute. There were no extra nerves Saturday during the championship dual, even though his top-seeded KoMets team was down 23-16 to Zumbrota-Mazeppa.
"I knew what my plan was, so I wasn't too nervous about it," Glazier said. "I'm confident in all 14 guys on our team no matter who's on the mat. There's no reason to have any nerves, and that helps me not be nervous myself."
Glazier stepped on the mat and easily pinned Z-M's Max Ramer at 195 pounds, putting his K-M team within a point, 23-22. KoMet seniors Eli Richardson and Heath Parrish both pinned their respective opponents at 220 pounds and heavyweight, giving Kasson-Mantorville a 34-23 win and a trip to the state tournament.
"It feels good, especially (as a) senior. It feels good to get the trip to state," Glazier said. "It wasn't the prettiest dual, but the guys handled some adversity pretty well, and we came out on top. Fun, fun dual, got the job done, but we still got more to do."
The adversity came as coach Ryan Hill was forced to shuffle his lineup around after the semifinal dual against Cannon Falls, which K-M won 63-9, because of an injury.
"Things didn't go quite as planned," Hill said, "but the guys just wrestled like it was any other day of the week and just controlled what they could control."
The four KoMet seniors — Glazier, Richardson, Parrish and Noah Swarts — did their jobs on the mat, which is imperative to the success of the team overall because "when they're wrestling well, we usually, as a team, wrestle pretty well," Hill said.
It's important for the KoMets to have a solid core of the team for other younger wrestlers to learn from. It also helped Hill, who is in his first season as the head coach after years of being Jamie Heidt's assistant.
The roles are reversed now, but over the course of their 10 years together, Hill and Heidt have led great teams.
"We've had a lot of good teams come through this program, and we feel this team has probably made the most improvement from day one to where we're at today," Hill said. "Maybe they don't get the credentials of some of those other teams, but they're going out there and beating guys they're not supposed to beat.
"They got a lot of pride in the work that they put in every day, and they come in and get that 1% better every day."
These KoMets wrestlers will be able to measure themselves against previous successful K-M teams in two weeks when the state tournament begins Thursday, March 2. There's more work to do now, though — the individual Section 1AA tournament starts Friday, Feb. 24.
"Time to get back to work," Hill said. "(State) is still another two weeks away, and there's still a lot of time to make a lot of jumps on the competition, so we got to get back to work right away."
There's one person who's undoubtedly more focused on the individual section tournament: Glazier, who won the 170-pound class last season.
"The only thing I'm worried about now is my first match of individual sections," he said. "I know the guys wanted this, but, at the end of the day, we got bigger goals that we still have to accomplish."
