TACOMA – So exhausted that he could barely lift himself off the mat, Dan Claussen knew that raising his arms in celebration was totally out of the question.
Then again, Claussen didn’t see much reason to celebrate Friday afternoon’s quarterfinal victory at the 2A state wrestling tournament. The 140-pound Cedarcrest High School senior didn’t do anything he hasn’t done before.
Thanks to a taxing, 13-12 win over Deer Park’s Viktor Nesenchuk, Claussen advanced to the state semifinals for the fourth year in a row. This year, he wants to finally take the next step.
“I’ve made the semifinals every year since my freshman year, so that’s good,” said Claussen, who has yet to advance to the finals at Mat Classic. “But that’s just my first goal.”
Claussen was one of three Cedarcrest wrestlers to advance to today’s semifinals, joining 119-pounder Ty Howard and 189-pound Rick Westermann.
The performance was good enough to put the Red Wolves in ninth place after the first day of the 2A tournament, with 33 points. W.F. West leads that class with 56.5 points.
Howard and Westermann recorded comfortable victories in each of their two matches Friday, while Claussen had to sweat it out a bit.
After using a nifty fireman’s carry takedown to build up an 8-1 lead through the middle of the second period in his quarterfinal match, Claussen hit a wall and barely held on. Nesenchuk recorded four takedowns in the third period alone, rallying to within 13-12.
“I don’t know why that happened,” Claussen said of his late struggles. “I did well early on, then I couldn’t make a shot for whatever reason.”
The match brought back some bad memories for Claussen, who was leading in the state semifinals last year before giving up a reversal and near fall in the final 30 seconds to lose out on a trip to the championship.
Claussen has reason to be concerned about his fourth semifinal appearance. This morning’s opponent, Tumwater’s Ricky Robbins, has already beaten Claussen once this season.
“He’s looked solid,” Cedarcrest coach Eric Pedeferri said of Claussen’s state tournament performance, “but it’ll be a tough semifinal match.”
Cedarcrest was the only area school to send wrestlers to the 2A finals. Archbishop Murphy had two quarterfinalists in 103-pound Jeremy Wattam and 189-pound Zeke Evers, but they both lost. Lakewood 130-pounder Steve Edmonds also fell in the quarterfinals.
While Cedarcrest cracked the top 10 in the 2A tournament, Darrington had similar success in the Class B bracket. The Loggers will have three wrestlers compete in today’s finals – unlike the 16-wrestler brackets in all A classes, the B tournament features only eight wrestlers in each class – and sit in fourth place heading into today’s matches.
Darrington’s Johnny Loughnan, a 103-pound freshman, had the quickest path to the finals, pinning his two Friday opponents in a combined 2 minutes, 15 seconds.
Asked whether he even broke a sweat on Friday, Laughnan said: “I did in my second match.”
Teammates Conner Rounds (189) and Trevor Herston (215) had more difficult challenges. Rounds scraped out a 5-1 semifinal win over Concrete’s Wayne Cress, while Herston beat Reardon’s Rory Beckstrom 5-3.
“It’s everything I’ve worked for over the years,” said Herston, who joined the wrestling team as a sophomore after assistant coach Joey Brown talked the muscular student into giving the sport a try.
“He was hanging out on the street, and we basically said: ‘Why don’t you come into the (wrestling) room?’” Darrington coach Jeremy Stafford said.
Darrington has 58 team points, trailing first-place Republic by 16.5. Part of the Loggers’ success might have come from an afternoon pep talk from Rick Iversen, the legendary former Marysville-Pilchuck wrestling coach who is friends with Darrington’s superintendent.
The Loggers also benefited from moving down a class, from 1A to B, for the first time.
Darrington, which has just 150 students over four grades, has three of them headed to the state finals, where no Logger has gone since Andy West in 1998.
“It really helps being out of 1A,” Stafford said. “We are such a small school. We’ve always had some success, but by the time we got here (to state) with all the bigger 1A schools, it’s pretty tough.”
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