Rogers Royal Wrestling

Wrestling: Rogers loses to Becker 66-10; injuries on both sides

The Becker vs. Rogers wrestling match was a somber on after one boy on each side was injured in back to back bouts Thursday evening.

Becker won 66-10.

After Rogers forfeited the first two weights, Connor Larson at 120 had a 2-0 lead on Sam Kircher after five minutes and was controling the match, when he planted and dislocated his elbow.

After a long break due to the injury, Rogers’ Phillip Anderson took the mat against Becker’s Luke Schmitz. Just eight seconds in, Schmitz planted his leg and dislocated a knee.

“I’ve been around wrestling a long time,” said Chris Donnay, Rogers coach, “and I have never seen a dual as strange as the beginning of this one ….  In 30 to 40 minutes, we wrestled only eight seconds or so.”

Up next was Tim Beach, who got pinned in 25 seconds by Zack Zimmer.

Donnay called it a “tough situation” to wrestle just after seeing two major injuries.

“From there it was hard for the guys to get anything going against a great Becker team,” said Donnay.

Becker improved to 14-3 overall and 3-1 in conference. Rogers is now 1-3 in conference and 5-8 overall.

Wrestling: Spectrum hosts first invitational; Rogers has 2 of the champs

The only neighboring school on hand was Rogers, which had two champions — Phillip Anderson and Clay LeVasseur — and placed fourth with a lineup missing two starters with injury and two others held out due to match counts.

LeVassuer, a standout linebacker on the Royals conference and section champion football team, got back into the wrestling lineup three weeks ago after a year away. A right shoulder injury (torn labrum) cut short his junior season, and after getting banged up in football this fall, too, he said at the time he was unsure if he’d report for wrestling at all.

“It’s feeling a lot better now,” said LeVasseur. “And frankly, I was getting bored, not being in a sport. So I thought I’d give it a try.”

LeVasseur was voted outstanding wrestler in the tournament by coaches as he pinned three straight opponents, including Chandler Arredondo (9-6) of Richfield-Edina  in the finals, for the 195-pound title. He has won all 11 matches so far, and broke into the Class AAA rankings this week at No. 10 in Class AAA.

“My goal is to have fun, and to make state this time,” said LeVasseur, adding that he fell one win short  his sophomore year with a true-second loss to a Monticello  opponent at sectionals. Last year, of course, he didn’t get the chance to complete.

Anderson (26-4), a sophomore who leads the team in wins, pinned all three opponents, just like he did two weeks ago at the St. Croix Lutheran tournament. Anderson stuck Michael Schrimpf (16-10) of St. Croix Lutheran in the finals.

Rogers had one other surprise finalist in Jordan Lemcke, a freshman in his first year wrestling. Lemcke (5-7) notched two decisions before getting tech-falled by Delano’s Andy Rieder in the 170-pound finals.

Rogers junior Tim Beach (19-10) placed third at 132 pounds.