‘It’s going to be on these guys to guide everyone else’
- Val T.
- Feb 27
- 11 min read
Gard takes 4th, Horn, Beck each finish 7th at state, has Wilson optimistic for future
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
INDIANAPOLIS — The Rochester boys wrestling team’s season ended with one eye on the present and one eye on the future at the IHSAA state finals at Gainbridge Fieldhouse Saturday.
As for the present, Rochester had three podium finishers for the first time with Declan Gard finishing fourth at heavyweight, and Layne Horn and Brant Beck each finishing seventh at 132 and 157, respectively.
And from the fingernail marks on Gard’s beck to the shiner underneath Horn’s eye to the cut across the bridge of Beck's nose and the tape on his left wrist, it was a reminder that in the present, wrestling is a grueling sport. There is no easy road to the state finals.
And it can be bitterly disappointing to wrestle in the consolation rounds when wrestlers set a high bar for themselves.
“It’s kind of hard when you know what you want and you don’t get it to bounce back and wrestle,” Rochester coach Tristan Wilson said. “It’s the same with all of the guys. They didn’t get really what they wanted, and it showed in the wrestlebacks a little bit.”
And there is also the future to consider: Wilson’s first season as coach produced four state qualifiers – only in 2024 has Rochester sent more kids to state – but he plans to get even better.
Rochester won the Indiana High School Wrestling Coaches Association Class 1A team state duals on their home mats in 2024. They surrendered their crown this year to a school less than 20 miles to their south – North Miami.
The wrestlers were already talking of winning that title back next January. Wilson said Rochester will fill all 14 weight classes next year after having to forfeit 106, 113, 120 and 126 this year.
Though 175-pound state qualifier Wyatt Davis will graduate, they will bring back the three state placers plus 150-pound sectional and regional champion Braddock Behling and 190-pound semistate qualifier Derek Wortley.
In addition, the number of middle school wrestlers blows Wilson away.
“We’re going to fill all the weight classes next year,” Wilson said. “That shouldn’t be a problem. We have 64 kids on our middle school team, which is an absolute insane number. We have a lot of guys coming up below that won’t be in the lineup next year but a lot of young kids coming up. The future’s bright. This is a launch point right now. It’s time to reset and use all of our leaders right now that all placed today and teach everyone else on the team, ‘OK, this is how we have to practice, this is how we have to compete, this is what we have to during a long season, this is how we have to lift.’ It’s going to be on these guys to guide everyone else.”
Said Gard: “I think we’ll be much better next year. I think we’ll have a chance of winning 1A again, which would be awesome. But I’m excited to lead the team again.”
Declan Gard
In an intense battle of positioning through hand fighting and wrist ties, Gard began his Saturday with a 3-2 win in an ultimate tiebreaker – wrestling parlance for “triple overtime” – over Warren Central’s Jacarei Markey in the state quarterfinals.
All five points came on escapes.
After a scoreless first period, Gard chose the bottom position and gained an escape in the second period. Markey gained an escape from the bottom position in the third period.
Neither wrestler scored from a neutral position in the first overtime.
Markey got another escape to take a 2-1 lead to start the second overtime. He chose neutral to start the next period, giving Gard an escape point to tie the match 2-2.
Markey was betting that it was more likely that he could take down Gard rather than ride him for 30 seconds from the top position.
His bet did not pay off. He did not get the takedown. And by virtue of winning the second period coin toss, Gard had choice of position for the ultimate tiebreaker. He chose down and worked an escape to win the match. He immediately raised his arms in victory and pointed towards the Rochester fans in the stands.
“We won the coin toss, and you know, if you score first, then in an ultimate tiebreaker, you’re the one that gets to pick top and bottom,” Wilson said. “Once we had that … it was like a shot clock. … You have to try to score before that ultimate tiebreaker because whoever’s going to go down is probably going to get the escape unless they’re really, really good on top. So once we got the coin toss, he was not as offensive as he should have been, but we had that in the back of the mind that it was hard to overcome knowing that at the end, if worse comes to worse, we could still win.”
Gard said Markey was inactive.
“He didn’t really want to do anything, which makes it kind of hard for me to do anything,” Gard said. “But once I got the coin toss, I knew if it went into an ultimate tiebreaker, I knew I was going to be able to get up
Gard then lost to Crown Point’s top-ranked Lucas Szymborski, a Ball State football recruit, by a 15-0 technical fall in 4:15 in the semifinals.
Szymborski, a senior who won two state championships in Tennessee before transferring to Crown Point, dove in low at Gard’s knees moments after an official hit Gard with a stalling warning and got a takedown.
Szymborski got an escape and then a takedown and a near-fall to make it 11-0 at the outset of the second period. A stalling penalty on Gard made it 12-0.
A takedown in the third period ended the match.
“He took me down twice with the same takedown, and then the second time, I tried to just scramble a little with him, and he caught me on my back, which sucks. But he’s really good.”
Gard then lost 7-2 to Brownsburg’s Maximus Forrester in the third-place match.
Gard scored first on an escape in the second period, but Forrester attacked his leg for a takedown and led 3-1 after two periods.
Forrester added an escape and a takedown in the third period and led 7-1. Gard got an escape but could not score again from neutral.
Gard, who was ranked No. 12 at 285 according to IndianaMat.com, finished 43-7. His losses were to the eventual state champion (Lowell’s Kameron Hazelett), the state runner-up (Szymborski), the state third-place wrestler (Forrester) plus two losses each to Peru’s No. 6 Trevi Hillman-Conley and Warsaw’s No. 7 Kameron Kauffman.
“He had a phenomenal year,” Wilson said. “He obviously had a lot of adversity throughout the season. He got tested a lot throughout the season and ended up placing fourth over everyone who beat him. It just shows that anything can happen in a state run, and it’s not anyone’s job to make sure who goes where. So all we have to do is just take people in front of us and wrestle them hard.”
Layne Horn
Horn, ranked No. 4, suffered his first loss of the season when he dropped a 1-0 decision to Center Grove’s No. 7 Eddie Goss in the quarterfinals Saturday morning.
Goss gained an escape in the second period for the match’s only point. He then rode Horn from the top position for the third period to secure the victory.
“He threw them boots in, and he rode me like a dog,” Horn said. “He’s very good on top.”
Known for his ability to keep his opponent under him from the top position, Goss subsequently beat Delta’s Sam Mosier 1-0 in the semifinals using much the same tactics as he did against Horn.
“Goss is really tough on top,” Wilson said. “Real good at legs. Once he flattened him out, he just ran the half and held it there. … The plan wasn’t to go down, but I didn’t feel like we were getting into too many positions either, so as soon as he got the escape, it left us the option that we have to go down and try to get one.”
Horn then lost 4-1 in the consolation round to Warren Central’s No. 3 Donald Bowie.
Bowie earned a single-leg takedown in the first period to lead 3-0. Horn got an escape in the second period but shook free from Horn’s attempt to get his own single-leg takedown.
Bowie then completed the scoring with an escape in the third period.
Horn then bounced back to win by fall in 2:03 over DeKalb’s Drew Waldon in the seventh-place match, bending Waldon’s arms back with a move that Horn called a “wing and wrist” and finally securing Waldon’s left shoulder to the mat.
Horn finished the season 48-2. He will take a 131-6 record into his senior season.
“I don’t think I went out there 100 percent ready to wrestle,” Horn said. “I don’t think I wrestled 100 percent at all today. I still think I had a lot in the tank. But I can’t change it now.”
Horn said not winning state is “very frustrating but it’s part of it.” He said he knows what he has to work on for next year.
“Very, very sore,” Horn said. “It hurts to move everything right now. But it’s all going to be worth it in the end.”
Brant Beck
Beck, ranked second behind eventual state champion Matthew Staples of New Prairie, suffered similar 4-3 losses to Warren Central’s No. 4 Christian Arberry and Cowan’s No. 5 Jackson Bradley in his first two matches Saturday.
In both matches, Beck gained an escape in the third period. In both matches, Beck’s opponent was called for a stalling penalty, giving a point to Beck.
In neither match did he get a takedown. The inactivity from his opponents frustrated Beck but Beck said that a wrestler cannot leave a match into a referee’s hands.
“Just stalling in general,” Beck said. “Me personally, I hate when kids stall. I hate when kids don't actually stay in the match and wrestle, even when you are up by a little amount and still don’t take shots and still don’t be on the offense. It just infuriates me.”
Wilson said getting the first takedown in highly competitive matches like the ones at state is crucial. Once a wrestler gets the first takedown, he can play defense.
“You’ve got to know at this level that once a guy gets a takedown, they’re going to shut down, and they’re going to play defense,” Wilson said. “And it’s a lot harder to take someone down when they’re not trying to take you down. So it just locks them up in a position where I can just play the line, I can make some fakes on some big shot attempts, and I can just ride the rest of the match out. So after we lost those few exchanges upfront, it’s really hard to battle back at this level.”
After not getting a takedown against either Arberry or Bradley, Beck needed less than 10 seconds to get a takedown of Adams Central’s Maverick Dubach in the seventh-place match.
An escape and a takedown in the second period made it 7-0.
Dubach got one escape each in the second and third periods, but Beck cruised to a 7-2 win to finish a 46-3 season.
“I just knew after those two matches, I was pretty upset, but the next best thing was seventh,” Beck said. “So just coming out with a bunch of energy, and I knew the first period was one minute, so get your takedown, and that could seal the whole match.”
Like Horn, he is on pace to break the school wins record that assistant coach and brother Brady Beck owns.
“It’s a tough sport,” Beck said. “It hurts. During the matches, you don’t feel it because of the adrenaline. But after, everything hurts.”
Boys wrestling state notes
Rochester scored 23 points and finished in 16th place. During this four-year run in which they have sent at least four wrestlers to state every year, their best team finish was in 2022, when they scored 30 points and finished in a tie for 14th. That was the year Marshall Fishback won the state title at 285.
Wilson has high hopes for Jackson Robbins, who will be a junior next year. Robbins went 27-7 and was a regional qualifier as a freshman at 106 in 2023-24 when he wrestled for Caston. He transferred to Rochester for his sophomore year but did not receive eligibility.
“I would be hard-pressed to not believe he’ll be on the podium next year too. He’s very good. … He’ll have two years with us, and he just won freshman-sophomore state qualifier and bonuses his way through the tournament.”
Wilson was an assistant coach on Clint Gard’s staff before the Rochester School Board chose not to renew Gard’s contract. Wilson ascending to head coach left a vacancy at assistant, which 2024 grad Brady Beck filled. Wilson said the new coaching staff’s relationship with each other has been harmonious.
“We’re all a team,” Wilson said. “We don’t keep secrets. We tell everybody everything, and that’s what keeps our coaching staff close, so we’re all on the same page. If anyone has an issue, we air it out, and we talk it all through. They had to take a much higher road of everything. I lean on them probably more than I should right now, and it’s a team. Yes, I’m the quote-unquote head coach, but we’re all doing the work of the head coach. We’re all doing the work of assistant coaches. It’s a team effort with the coaching staff.”
Brownsburg won their second straight team title. Their 243 points broke a state record and was more than second-place Center Grove and third-place Crown Point had combined. Brownsburg had seven individual state champions.
Brownsburg’s Jake Hockaday became the 12th four-time state champion in IHSAA history when he won the 132-pound title. Hockaday is a Nebraska recruit. Hockaday later told IHSAA Champions Network’s Greg Rakestraw in a spotlight interview after his championship match win that he wrestled all season with a torn ACL and meniscus. Surgery is scheduled for April.
IHSAA BOYS WRESTLING STATE FINALS (AT GAINBRIDGE FIELDHOUSE, INDIANAPOLIS): 1. Brownsburg 243, 2. Center Grove 115, 3. Crown Point 95.5, 4. Avon 73.5, 5. Warren Central 64, 6. Lowell 55, 7. Delta 52.5, t-8. New Prairie 39, t-8. Roncalli 39, 10. Evansville Mater Dei 38, 16. ROCHESTER 23, T-57. WINAMAC 0
ROCHESTER INDIVIDUAL RESULTS
132 – Layne Horn – seventh
def. Tripp Haisley (Madison-Grant), fall, 1:46
lost to Eddie Goss (Center Grove), 1-0
lost to Donald Bowie (Warren Central), 4-1
def. Drew Waldon (DeKalb), fall, 2:03
157 – Brant Beck – seventh
def. Deacon Dressler (Gibson Southern), 8-5
lost to Christian Arberry (Warren Central), 4-3
lost to Jackson Bradley (Cowan), 4-3
def. Maverick Dubach (Adams Central), 7-2
175 – Wyatt Davis – DNP
lost to Coy Bender (Terre Haute South), 4-0
HWT – Declan Gard – fourth
def. Keenan Mowery-Shields (South Putnam), 7-2
def. Jacarei Markey (Warren Central), 3-2 (ultimate tiebreaker)
lost to Lucas Szymborski (Crown Point), technical fall (15-0), 4:15
lost to Maximus Forrester (Brownsburg), 7-2
WINAMAC INDIVIDUAL RESULTS
215 – Talen Garner – DNP
lost to Travis Henke (Northridge), fall, 3:21
IHSAA STATE CHAMPIONS
106 – Traevon Ducking (Brownsburg), 113 – Case Bell (Brownsburg), 120 – Revin Dickman (Brownsburg), 126 – Nathan Rioux (Avon), 132 – Jake Hockaday (Brownsburg), 138 – Isaiah Schaefer (Evansville Mater Dei), 144 – Tommy Gibbs (Brownsburg), 150 – Parker Reynolds (Brownsburg), 157 – Matthew Staples (New Prairie), 165 – Adrian Pellot (Merrillville), 175 – Waylon Cressell (Warren Central), 190 – Gunner Henry (Brownsburg), 215 – Noah Weaver (Rossville), HWT – Kameron Hazelett (Lowell)
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