Wheaton North grinds out 3 dual victories

The Dundee-Crown Chargers hosted a five-team wrestling invitational Saturday that brought some of the best talent from the area to hit the mats.

Wheaton North (16-5) won all three of its team duals, facing Oak Park-River Forest, Prospect and Lane Tech.

"We've had a pretty competitive three weeks. This is nice three duals for us. Oak Park-River Forest is the real deal," said Wheaton North coach Steve Holland. "It's been a grind these past three weeks, and our seniors did a nice job. They knew what it was going to take and they did a nice job."

One of Wheaton North's top wrestlers, Nathan Fitzenreider (27-3), suffered an early loss against Prospect's Johny Brennan in the 125-pounder match but was able to battle back with an impressive win over Oak Park-River Forest's Lillishawn Coleman 5-1.

"I can't say enough about Nathan Fitzenreider. He had a tough kid from Prospect, he got put on his back, was down 5-0 and battled back and ended up losing the battle 5-4. A lot of kids wouldn't have been able to bounce back from that. Then he came out and had to wrestle Lillishawn Coleman -- one of the toughest kids in the nation. He battled back to beat Lillishawn who hadn't been taken down all year. That showed true character."

Fitzenreider knew he was going to have a tough day but also is learning to move on and learn from his experiences.

"I knew coming into this (invite) that I was going to have a tough day. I was upset the way the (match with Brennan) went, but you have to get over it when you have multiple tough matches in a row," Fitzenreider said. "If you keep yourself down then your attitude just carries to the next match. That happened to me last year."