STC’s Garrett Arp wrestles in the quarterfinal match at the WaMaC conference tournament on Saturday, Feb. 1. Arp was conference runner up at weight 152. Chronicle Photo/Allison Graham

South Tama sent nine wrestlers through to the final round at the prestigious Class 2A WaMaC wrestling tournament on Saturday. The tournament was hosted by West Delaware on February 1.

The WaMaC Conference is loaded with ranked wrestlers and teams which makes it one of the top conference tournaments in the state. Out of the top 10 teams in Class 2A, four are in the WaMaC Conference. West Delaware is ranked first followed by Independence at 4th, Solon at 6th and Williamsburg at 10th.

South Tama’s top two finishers were Logan Arp at 126 and his brother Garrett Arp at 152.

Logan started his day with a bye. His first match was against Cael Grell of Central DeWitt. Arp won 7-0 sending him to the semi finals match. There he faced Wyatt Bieschke of Benton Community. Bieschke was ranked 4th in Class 2A. In the championship match Logan faced second ranked Isaiah Weber of Independence. Weber won 7-2.

Garrett started his day with a bye. His first match was against Austin Timmerman of Benton Community. Arp won 8-5 to move to the semi finals. In the semis Garrett wrestled Conner Grover of Beckman Catholic. Arp won 5-0. In the finals Garrett faced Class 2A 4th ranked Zeb Gnida of Solon. Gnida won by tech fall (16-1).

STC’S Logan Arp defeated the Class 2A fourth ranked Wyatt Bierschke (Benton) in the semifinal round of the WaMaC Conference Tourney on Sat. Fe.b 1. Chronicle Photo/Allison Graham

Finishing the day with wins were STC’s 106 Brody Chyma and 182 Payton Vest. Chyma took 7th after pinning Jordan Thys of Benton Community while Vest took 5th after pinning Marcus Beatty of Independence.

Other finalist finishes for the Trojans included Kyler Smith (132). at 8th place, Boden Koehler (145) at 4th, Brayden Smith (170) 6th, Mitchell Knock (195) at 4th and Kalem Schrock (220) at 4th. The Trojans were open at 113, 120, 160 and 285.

“We had some ups and downs. The WaMaC is the top 2A conference in the State. You look at the 170 weight class and it’s the the top four guys in the State. There were no easy weights and it’s a testament to the WaMaC Conference. I think if you look at seeds we wrestled pretty close to seed. We had two guys wrestle above seed and one wrestle below so a lot of it kind of went as expected on paper. It was nice to get a couple of guys in the finals. I think that’s good for the team, program and school to have that,” said coach Nate Van Dyke.

The Trojans will now turn all of their attention onto the Sectional meet on Saturday, Feb. 8. STC will compete at Union, La Porte City along with BCLUW-SH, East Marshall, Nevada, Union and West Marshall. The top two wrestlers in each weight class will move on to Districts on Saturday, February 15 which will be held at Ballard, Huxley.