Three Reeths-Puffer wrestlers won individual weight class championships at Saturday’s Greater Muskegon Athletic Association City Tournament at Montague High School.
Senior Kaden Malotke captured the 138-pound title, sophomore Ian Cook won the 126-pound crown, and freshman Jake Rozycki took top honors in the 113-pound division.
Malotke, who has more than 100 career wins, captured his first city championship. He defeated Whitehall’s Ryne Christensen 11-4 in the championship match.
“I am really happy right now,” Malotke said. “He’s no joke. He’s a tough guy on top. He almost put me on my back but I ended up escaping. I think that’s where I broke him mentally. It feels amazing. I can check this one off the bucket list.”
R-P's Ian Cook (top), who won his second consecutive individual city title. Photo/Jeremy Clark
Cook won his second title in two years of varsity wrestling and is on pace to have the rare distinction of being a four-time champion. He defeated Mona Shores’ Anthony Cage 9-0 in the championship round.
Rozycki was competing in his very first city tournament and broke in with a bang, beating Fruitport’s Kyle Holt 5-0 in a touch championship match.
“It’s a pretty good feeling,” Rozycki said. “I’ve been putting in a lot of work for a long time and it’s paying off.”
R-P's Kaden Malotke, who won the 138-pound championship.
Reeths-Puffer Coach Jared Fleming was very impressed with the way all three of his champions competed on Saturday.
“Kaden, Ian and Jake all wrestled really well,” the coach said. “They each had some very tough opponents throughout the day and they got it done. Jake had the toughest matchup in the finals. I wasn’t sure how he would do against him, but he wrestled really good on top.”
Sage Secrest (165) and Nathan Stafford (285) took second place in their weight classes while three Rockets finished third - Owen Schab (144), Nathan Reeves (150) and Brayden Chase (106).
The Rockets also did very well as a team, finishing second overall in the 12-team tournament with 157 points, behind only first place Whitehall (242.5) and just beating out third-place Fruitport (152 points).
R-P's Jake Rozycki, who won the 113-pound championship.
R-P had a tough break when Omillion Wyrick was forced to take a medical forfeit in the semifinal round of the 176-pound weight class, due to a blow he took to the head in an earlier match.
"It was just an abundance of caution on our part," Fleming said. "He just didn't wrestle like himself after that. He's a competitor and he wanted to stay in the match, but we felt like we had to do a medical forfeit.
"He didn't end up placing. He would have at least taken third place, for sure."
R-P's Nathan Stafford wrestles against a Montague opponent on Saturday. Photo/Jeremy Clark
Overall Fleming said it was a very strong performance for the Rockets against their local competition.
“It was a good day for sure,” he said. “We wrestled well. We are super proud of the guys.
“We wanted to compete with Whitehall, we thought we had a good chance to, but we had a couple things not go our way with injures and missing a few weight classes. There were three teams up there at the top. We just needed some help from the rest of the county to beat some of the Whitehall guys, but they took care of business.”
