Whitfield Wrestlers Take Districts, 12 Will Go to State

coach Charlie Sheretz has produced another district championship team.

At the district meet, held on Saturday at Whitfield, the Warriors qualified 12 for the state meet. Seven of those were district champions. Whitfield won with 259.5 points. St. James followed with 195.5, then Herculaneum with 176, and Brentwood with 101.

Whitfield’s district champions were:

• Chris Wilkes (126)
• Austin Smith (132)
• Rodney Hahn (145)
• Will Hahn (152)
• Andrew McLaughlin (170)
• Ethan Sherertz (182)
• Stephen Scobee (220)

Also qualifying for state, are:

• Saad Raza (106), 3rd
• Lawrence Becker (138), 3rd
• Pat McLaughlin (160), runner up
• Michael Shearburn (195), 3rd
• Ben Asyre (113), 4th

If a team qualifies enough wrestlers for state, and wrestles well, it can win state, which is what Whitfield did in 2008 and 2009. Sheretz thinks they have a chance this year.

“We've got a shot,” he said. “We didn’t blow anything. "We’ve got to keep moving in the right direction.”

He said they had what he considered a “bad round.”

“We didn’t set the world on fire,” he said. “Even some of the guys that won looked like they were sleep-walking. I think we rebounded in the last round, the round to qualify, and then the round to go.”

He also said they came through the meet relatively unscathed, which is important.

Sheretz' goals before the trip to Columbia are, “Try to keep everybody’s weight under control, try to keep everybody healthy and try to keep moral high. It’s a very short week.”

The state brackets will be set, now that all the districts have wrestled around Missouri. Sheretz said you never know how those will shake out, giving a team an easier or a more difficult road to a state championship.

“We didn’t draw particularly well last year at the state meet,” he said. “We were going to have to do it the hard way, and we just didn’t make enough of our own breaks and we took second.”

He said the team is in as good a position this year as last to win the state tournament.

“We control our own destiny,” he said. “We wrestle as well as we can we’re going to win a state tournament next week. We don’t, we’re going to lose a state tournament next week.”

Read more about the district tournament in an article in STLhighschoolsports.com.