{"id":128283,"date":"2020-02-17T04:56:37","date_gmt":"2020-02-17T09:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=128283"},"modified":"2020-02-17T04:56:43","modified_gmt":"2020-02-17T09:56:43","slug":"steyer-wins-fourth-wbl-wrestling-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2020\/02\/17\/steyer-wins-fourth-wbl-wrestling-title\/","title":{"rendered":"Steyer wins fourth WBL wrestling title"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>SCOTT TRUXELL\/<\/strong><em>independent sports editor<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>LIMA &#8212; Van Wert\u2019s Gabe Steyer won his fourth Western Buckeye League wrestling title and the Cougars had two runner-up finishers and a third place winner at the WBL Championships at Bath High School on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wrestling at 147 pounds, Steyer earned a first round bye then pinned Elida\u2019s Dalton Swickrath in the semifinals in 2:51, before pinning Shawnee\u2019s Trent Fairburn in 1:08 in the championship match. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"151\" height=\"252\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Gabe-Steyer-2-16-2020.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-128269\"\/><figcaption><strong>Gabe Steyer<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Steyer became just the second Cougar wrestler in school history to win four WBL titles, while going 40-0 in the league over his career. His season record now stands at 35-2 and his career record is 151-17.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cGabe has had a great career that he is hoping to finish off with a very deep run into the tournament,\u201d Van Wert wrestling coach Ben Collins said. &#8220;He is the winningest wrestler in Van Wert history and continues to work hard to perfect his craft.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Macein Bigham (154) pinned Shawnee\u2019s Damion Music in 3:32 in the opening round then pinned Wapakoneta\u2019s Jacob Schlesselman in the semifinals in 4:44. In the finals, Bigham earned a second place finish after dropping a 12-5 decision to Defiance\u2019s Dominic Tracy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After a first round bye at 287, Eli Kline earned a hard fought 7-4 decision over Wapakoneta\u2019s Carl Rostorfer, then dropped a 15-1 major decision to Bath\u2019s Carter Butler in the championship match. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition, Killian Sudduth notched a third place finish at 122. After getting pinned in the semifinals (1:48) by eventual champion Trevor Hisey of St. Marys Memorial, Sudduth bounced back by pinning Elida\u2019s Isaac Fredricks in just 30 seconds, followed by a pin in 2:11 over Shawnee\u2019s Ethan Morgan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cKillian finished the day wrestling very well and Macein getting into the finals as the No. 4 seed was a fantastic day for him, especially pinning the No. 1 seed,\u201d Collins said. \u201cEli had a good weekend wrestling well in both matches.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>St. Marys Memorial won the team title with 151 points, while Celina finished as the runner up with 145.5 points. Van Wert finished sixth with 67 points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe wrestled pretty well,\u201d Collins said. \u201cThe goal was to finish in the top half, which would have been really good for only having seven wrestlers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Cougars will wrestle in the Division II district tournament February 28 and 29 at Defiance High School.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SCOTT TRUXELL\/independent sports editor LIMA &#8212; Van Wert\u2019s Gabe Steyer won his fourth Western Buckeye League wrestling title and the Cougars had two runner-up finishers and a third place winner at the WBL Championships at Bath High School on Saturday. Wrestling at 147 pounds, Steyer earned a first round bye then pinned Elida\u2019s Dalton Swickrath [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-01 11:50:37","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}