Wrestling National Championship
(Photo: Joshua Akkerman, WJON)
Wrestling National Championship
(Photo: Joshua Akkerman, WJON)
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ST. CLOUD - The St. Cloud State University Wrestling Team celebrated not only their first, but the University's first National Championship in school history. SCSU Athletic Director Heather Weems was at the Wrestling Championships, and says it was great to watch the team's hard work pay off.

"There is little more gratifying then seeing a team perform at their best, and achieve goals that have been a long time in the making," says Weems, "Every point in this meet mattered, every match mattered, St. Cloud State Athletics is a special place where dreams become reality. It happens here." 

Wrestling Head Coach Steve Costanzo says this year's wrestling team was a special group of wrestlers.

He says, "We went into the National Tournament, and I think maybe we were the only ones believing that we could achieve something like this by bringing only six guys where as a lot of other teams brought seven qualifiers, eight qualifiers. In order to win a championship we basically had to be flawless." 

Freshman Tim Prescott was an individual champion at 125 lbs. He beat the top three ranked wrestlers in the nation on the way to his championship.

"It's just unreal, it's unbelievable. Just to be a part of this great team, our family that we made, it's just great. It feels good that all of this hard work was to be able to reach this point in time," says Prescott.

Sophomore Austin Goergen was the runner up at heavyweight. He says wrestling is hard work, and gave credit to the SCSU Wrestling Coaching Staff for their support. Junior Captain Clint Poster spoke about finally bringing home a national championship.

He says, "Seeing all of the heart breaks, being a part of the heart breaks, and thinking about all of the alumni that got so close to it, and this year we actually got it, we can touch it, it's surreal, and everybody here is apart of it." 

Poster took third place, along with Junior Gabe Fogarty. Sophomore Mike Rhone took fifth place, and freshman Larry Bomstad took seventh place. All six of the place winners were named All-Americans, and all of them will be returning to the Huskies mat next year.

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