Jahnke, Minder-Broeckaert win respective brackets

The Ellsworth Panthers wrestling team continued its action-packed schedule with a third-place finish as a team at the Fillmore C/ Lanesboro/M-C Holiday Tournament in Harmony, Minn., on Saturday, Dec. 17.

Ellsworth senior Louis Jahnke continued his strong senior campaign on Saturday afternoon, as he earned his second tournament win with a pinfall in the 170-pound championship match. Standout freshman J.D. Minder- Broeckaert also captured his second tournament win of the season with a pinfall in the fifth round of the 126-pound bracket.

“J.D. Minder and Louis Jahnke were our two champions and they both took care of business,” Ellsworth wrestling head coach Mark Matzek said. “J.D. had four pins on the day and Louis only had two matches, but also had two pins. In the brackets they were in, they did what they were expected to do and dominated.”

Minder-Broeckaert worked his way to a title through four matches of the round-robin series in the 126-pound bracket on Saturday afternoon. Minder-Broeckaert secured pins in the first, second and fourth rounds to advance to the championship match against Aiden Quintana of GMLOS. Minder-Broeckaert made quick work of Quintana and secured a pin in less than 90 seconds in the title match.

While Minder-Broeckaert worked his way through the 126-pound round-robin series, the aforementioned Jahnke competed in the 170-pound bracket. Jahnke advanced out of the first round with a bye and then booked his place in the championship match with a pinfall victory over Drake Payne of GMLOS in the semifinals.

Jahnke took care of business in the 170-pound title match with a pinfall victory early in the second period against WWC senior Peyton Hoff. Both Jahnke and Minder- Broeckaert’s victories helped propel Ellsworth to a third-place finish with a team score of 139.5 points.

Despite finishing third out of 10 teams at the FCLMC Holiday Tournament, coach Matzek felt like his team left some matches out there and that they could have secured a runner-up finish to Chatfield. He spoke about not quite achieving the goal for the day.

“Honestly, I was disappointed,” Matzek said. “Even without Anthony (Madsen) and Ethan (Veenendall), I wanted to be second. Without being full-strength we weren’t going to beat Chatfield, but we left some matches out there on Saturday.”

Although Ellsworth has objectively performed well through the first month of the season, finishing in the top third of teams in every major tournament thus far, coach Matzek still believes his team has a lot of growth to achieve.

Part of that room for development is the number of underclassmen he has on the varsity roster, including the aforementioned Minder-Broeckaert as well as sophomores Noah Walker, Michael Holst, and Levi and Blake Nelson.

“We have quite a few sophomores starting for us and they’re going to make mistakes,” Matzek said. “Whether that’s in their warmups, maybe a technical mistake in a match, or some kind of match awareness mistake, they have to make those mistakes because experience is the best teacher. We can hammer them all we want, but they have to go through those growing pains.”

Matzek knew that the 2022-23 iteration of the Ellsworth Panthers would be a group of mostly young athletes that had youth and inexperience, while also having a nearly limitless ceiling of talent.

Because of that, he created the Panthers’ wrestling schedule so that most of the competitions this year would be individual tournaments where his younger wrestlers could make mistakes and learn early in the season. At the same time, veteran wrestlers could compete in championship matches and face some of the best competition in the state.

“It’s the reason I created the schedule the way I did,” Matzek said. “It’s not just to blow up all my Saturdays, but it’s because these kids need these matches and they have to make those mistakes. As the year progresses, they’re going to start overcoming that adversity as well.”

Matzek created a tough schedule so that his team is battle-tested once the most important wrestling of the year begins in the second week of February. He spoke about what his message to the team has been as of late.

“I’m going to tell them today that state championships aren’t won in December, but they certainly can be lost,” Matzek said. “Especially if you don’t make adjustments and don’t work hard. We need to continue focusing on the process, doing the things we need to do and not lose sight of the end of our year.”

Ellsworth has set its sights on a top-two finish as a program at the WIAA Division 2 Regional in the second week of February. A second-place finish would secure a spot in the Division 2 Team Sectional the following week.

While that is the team’s biggest goal, the Panthers will continue business as usual on Thursday, Dec. 22, when Ellsworth competes in a six-team wrestling scramble at Stanley- Boyd High School in Stanley. Wrestling is slated to begin at 4 p.m.

Ellsworth sophomore Blake Nelson gets a pin during a match earlier this season. Nelson is one of several underclassmen on the Panthers’ roster this year. Photo by Reagan Hoverman