Double Trouble: Alton twins, Stieber brothers win Cadet Freestyle titles
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by InterMat
By Jason Bryant jbryant@intermatwrestle.com
Fargo, N.D. -- The only thing they can argue over is what’s better – you and your brother winning a title or you and your twin brother winning a title.
For Ohio brothers Logan and Hunter Stieber, they’ve got plenty to brag about. The same can be said for Pennsylvania twins Dylan and Andrew Alton.
All four wrestlers won their respective weight classes at the USA Wrestling Cadet Freestyle National Championships on Wednesday at the Fargodome in Fargo, N.D. on the campus of North Dakota State University.
A second set of twins, Jade and Vaylen Rauser of Montana also reached the finals, but both fell in the finals at 84 and 91 pounds.
Jade was the victimized by Minnesota’s Hayden Zillner at 84 pounds. Zillner became just the third USA Wrestling Triple Crown winner and he did so beating the same opponent that earned him the Greco-Roman championship earlier in the week.
Zillner won the first period 6-0 before giving up the second 1-1. In the third period, Zillner wouldn’t be denied as he bulled Montana’s Jade Rauser to his back late in the match to score a third period fall at 1:53 and gave him the championship at 84 pounds.
Zillner joins Zach Sanders and Taylor Moore as the only winners of the USA Wrestling folkstyle, freestyle and Greco-Roman titles in the same year.
Carson Kuhn avenged his loss to Vaylen Rauser in Greco-Roman by winning the title at 91 pounds.
After the Rausers unsuccessfully tried to become the first brother combo to win on the night, but the night belonged to the bigger sets of brothers.
The fun started with Hunter Stieber, a rising freshman at Monroeville High School, picking up a 3-0, 3-0 victory at 98 pounds over Cadet Greco-Roman champion Jake Thielke of Wisconsin.
Older brother Logan, a champion at last year’s Cadet Freestyle championships, repeated as a champion, winning the 112-pound title over fellow Ohioan Sam White. Logan picked up a 1-0, 6-0 victory, scoring the only point in the first period with a pushout, then exploiting a trapped arm gut-wrench for two turns to finish off White in the second.
“It’s a little harder, but funner. I’ve been here before and all I do is try to go out there and do my beset,” said Logan. Short on words, Logan summed up the feeling of sharing the stage with his younger brother with two words.
“Feels great,” said Logan.
“We’ve wrestled a lot when we younger,” said Logan about White. But perhaps it was the depth of the 103-pound weight class this year in Ohio that prepped Logan for the nationals more so than last year.
“I’ve wrestled those guys a lot. I work out with David Taylor and Jamie Clark a lot, so I know them very well.”
Hunter wasn’t as verbose as his brother, but to his credit, Logan’s been here before.
Hunter simply said the whole thing, “feels good.”
Dylan Alton fell just short of claiming a title in Greco-Roman, falling in the finals at 130 pounds, but he stepped to the raised platform in Fargo for the second time during the week and stared across at Greco-Roman champion Dylan Carew of Iowa. Carew moved up to 130 pounds after winning Greco in 125.
Carew was solid in the first; picking up an 8-1 first period victory, but Alton settled and won the next two periods 1-0, 2-1. Alton’s two points in the third broke a scoreless tie as he exposed Carew to the mat from their knees. Carew furiously tried to come back, gaining a takedown to close the gap in the waning seconds, but couldn’t score after a restart with four seconds to go.
Andrew Alton then took to the mat at 135 pounds.
After already winning the Greco-Roman title earlier in the week, Andrew looked to double up, and double up within his own household.
Leading into Andrew’s match, Dylan felt his brother would be ready.
“He’ll be hungry,” said Dylan just minutes before Andrew took to the mat.
Andrew took the mat with a voracious appetite, one which lasted 45 seconds.
Alton threw outmatched Brock Gutches of Oregon to his back twice in the first period to score a 6-0 period win in a scant 14 seconds. Alton goes one better, scoring a fall in 31 seconds.
“I was pumped my brother won, so I went there and went all out,” said Andrew. “I was a lot more pumped (after Dylan won); I’m glad that we did it.”
“It’s a lot better being twins than winning it together I think,” said Andrew.
Andrew became a double champion to join Zillner, Alan Waters of Missouri and Kansas’ Kyle Caylor as winners of both Greco-Roman and Freestyle.
One thing that the Stiebers will have over the Altons is with bragging rights to which high school brought home the most freestyle titles.
That argument goes to the Stiebers, as 171-pound champion Chris Phillips will also attend Monroeville when he enters high school in the fall. Phillips topped Minnesota’s Mic Berg 6-0, 4-0 and wasn’t tested.
Pennsylvania split the remaining two finalists, while Ohio added Riley Kilroy’s title at 160 pounds.
Josh Kindig, a runner-up for Pennsylvania in Greco-Roman, won a wild 0-3, 3-2, 5-5 match over Illinois’ Tony Ramos in the finals at 119 pounds.
Kindig, leading 1-0 in the third period, countered a Ramos double leg with a crotch lift to expose Ramos for two, but Ramos quickly scored the reversal to cut the lead to 3-1. Ramos closed the gap, scoring two consecutive takedowns to tie the score and as Ramos shot in for what would have been the go-ahead score, Kindig picked the ankle and rolled Ramos through to his back for two exposure points, but the action didn’t end. With time winding down, Ramos ended up finishing his attempt with a two-point turn with a power half in a crab ride, ending the period at 5-5.
Kindig got the period victory by virtue of scoring two two-point moves to Ramos’ one.
“I just saw his ankle and picked it up, he fell on his back and I got the points,” said Kindig of his clutch move to go up in the third. “I wasn’t looking to see what the score was, but I knew it was close.”
Waters capped off his week in Fargo by picking up a second championship. Waters beat Ohio’s Jamie Clark 2-2, 1-1 at 105 pounds to become a double champion.
Waters gave up the first takedown in each period, but in the first, used a two-point exposure countering Clark’s single-leg attempt, locked at the waist and rolled through. Clark scored a second takedown, but Waters won the period by virtue of his two point move.
In the second, Waters got a pushout after both were hand fighting on the edge. It was the final point of the period, thus Waters won the period.
“I knew he was pretty tough,” said Waters. “I’ve never wrestled him in freestyle. I beat him in Greco, but I just wanted to keep the score low.”
Cadets are routinely short on words following championships and Waters was no different.
How does winning two titles in Fargo feel? “Great,” said Waters.
Caylor horsed over Wisconsin’s Chris Weber to get the fall at 215 pounds and close his Fargo experience with two titles.
Missouri scored its second champion of the night as Mac Bailey, second in the Greco-Roman tournament earlier in the week, topped Nebraska’s Alex Bridgeford 4-0, 3-0 at 125 pounds.
Bailey scored the first period win on the strength of a quick headlock that put Bridgeford right to his back.
“I knew he liked to come in high, so I set it up and threw it,” said Bailey.
Bridgeford didn’t duplicate his error in the second period, but with time winding down in a scoreless period, Bailey blasted a double leg takedown, lifted Bridgeford to the sky and finished the driving move out of bounds for three points.
After the back to back wins by the Alton twins, Marshall Peppelman tried to become a double champion, but Wisconsin’s Kalvin York wasn’t having any of it.
York scrapped his way to a 4-2, 6-0 victory at 140 pounds. It was the first meeting between the two.
“I saw him earlier in the week, and some of my teammates said he would be my toughest competition,” said York.
And was he?
“Definitely,” he replied.
New Jersey took the first of its two individual titles at 145 pounds as Brandon Rolnick topped Greco-Roman champion Dirk Cowburn of Pennsylvania with a fall in 43 seconds.
Rolnick scored three points on a throw, and then arched on a gut-wrench, putting Cowburn’s shoulders to the mat for the fall.
“It’s not something I practice, because you really don’t get that too often,” said Rolnick.
The pair met earlier in the year at the Cadet Duals in a three-period bout won by Rolnick.
“All my friends have been eating and having fun during the summer, I’ve been training,” said Rolnick. “I watched the tape of our match and just worked on things to get ready for him.”
Other finals saw Riley Kilroy of Ohio give the Buckeye State its third champion of the night with a 1-1, 6-2 victory over South Dakota’s Tom Davies and Phillips followed at 171 with his victory over Berg. The win gave Ohio the most champions of any state with four.
At 152 pounds, New York’s Austin Meys split back-to-back 6-2 periods with New Jersey’s Preston Keiffer, but set up a painful three-quarter nelson that drove Keiffer to his back for the fall at 58 seconds into the third.
“I don’t use it a lot,” said Meys of the move.
Meys had a tumultuous year, dealing with a shoulder injury sustained at the New York State high school championships and then an injury that could have slowed him prior to the Cadets.
“I sprained my elbow before coming out here and I was hoping it wouldn’t affect my performance and thankfully it didn’t,” said Meys.
New Jersey’s Jonathan Becker faced teammate Anthony Campolattano for the second time in as many Cadet finals, but this time, Becker topped Campolattano in three periods to win the championship at 215 pounds.
The final bout of the night was won by Indiana heavyweight Joe Arthur. In the first, Arthur notched a 1-0 win with a pushout in the first period and then scored three takedowns in the third to take a 3-0 second period win.
It was close, but Pennsylvania edged Ohio for the team title by the slimmest of margins – a single point, 71-70.
Looks like the Altons get the ultimate bragging rights – Andrew was named the tournament’s Outstanding Wrestler.
