This past Friday night, Feb. 13, the wrestling team acknowledged their seniors at the Williams Fieldhouse for Senior Day. Seniors Carsten Carlsen, AJ Feldmann, Jeff Gale, Ryan Higgins, Matt McGill and Nick Ossi all got recognized for their four years as a Pioneer.

Head coach Chris Walter explained that the team was looking to improve after coming off of a tough loss against Loras College and they are trying to iron out problems that they had in their previous meet.

Photograph by Karmen Mallow

“The team as a whole needs to work on getting the bottom hand control on their opponents as well as setting up and taking crisp clean shots and executing them on their opponents,” Walter said.

This season seemed to get off to a rough and rocky start due to injuries, but the team has done a great job in pulling together, and are ready and excited to go against the fifth- ranked team in the country.

Higgins has his sights focused on the upcoming meet. This year, he moved up two weight classes to wrestle at the 165 weight pound class and says that he is doing fine, but is concerned about peaking out too soon.

“I am more focused on taking one thing at a time and looking forward to my final WIAC tournament,” Higgins said.

Junior Jesse Milks was unable to compete last week due to illness. A healthy Milks was able to wrestle at the Pioneer Invite but received his win from a forfeit.

Carlsen won the tiebreaker against his opponent Jake D’Acquisto winning 6-0 and will be awarded the better seeding in the WIAC tournament.

Over all, the match was a tough battle for the Pioneers against the fifth-ranked Warhawks but they were able to hold their composure and take the battle all the way to the end of the last match. In the end the Pioneers fell to the Warhawks by a score of 23-15.

The Pioneers will finish their season at the WICA tournament on Sunday, Feb. 22 hosted by the UW-Oshkosh Titans.