The Triton College wrestling team took advantage of their only home event of the season with their best overall showing to date at the 34th Annual Art Kraft Memorial Tournament Dec. 13 in River Grove.
The Trojans had a season-high four place-winners with
Keygan Jennings at 141lbs and
Fabian Salazar at 149lbs each finishing third in their weight classes. Both
Everett McClelland (197lbs) and
Jase Salin (165lbs) took home sixth place at their respective weights. Â
"The Art Kraft is usually a good indicator of how much we've grown the first half of the season," said Triton head coach
Chris Butz. "There were a lot of positives. We saw great improvement overall as a team, especially with our offense, moving our feet, getting to our attacks and just being more tenacious."
The Trojans had nine different wrestlers win at least a match at the Art Kraft as Triton benefited from the extra week of practice they had to prepare. In the past, the Trojans would schedule a tournament the weekend before the Art Kraft, but instead of competition, Butz wanted to use the time to fine tune things with his squad.
"Having those two weeks after the district duals (on Nov. 22) off from competition really helped us," Butz said. "The guys were able to get out of a competitive mindset, get into the lab at practice for us to work on the things they needed to fix."
Triton started seeing the results of that labor at the Art Kraft and now will have another extended break with the holidays to build and learn from this past weekend as the team is not back in action until Saturday, Jan. 3 at the Fred Johnson Duals hosted by Augustana College.
"We are building at the right pace," Butz said. "The Art Kraft was a great team day for us and I'm excited to see how we continue to grow at our next set of competitions."
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