Wilmington denies Lisle chance at state

Lisle freshman 103-pounder Brad Blechschmidt would have preferred the opportunity to start off Tuesday's Class 1A state-qualifying wrestling dual with powerful visiting Wilmington.

Instead, as luck would have it, the meet started at 130 pounds. By the time the Lions' state-qualifier took to the mat, Lisle trailed 44-7, so there was little Blechschmidt could do to save his team's season. But that didn't seem to stop him from going out in style, recording a quick pin with 1:27 left to go in the opening period.

There weren't many highlights for the Lions (19-3) on this night, but Blechschmidt's win by fall and Nick Nigru's gutty 6-3 victory at 189 provided some positives in a 60-13 defeat to the Wildcats (24-1). Wilmington, which had four wrestlers place in the top four at the state individual finals, including 135-pound champion John VanDuyne, moved on to the dual team state finals along with Harvard, which won the other one-sided bout Tuesday at Lisle.

"I was hoping I could wrestle first, but I guess it didn't really have an effect," said Blechschmidt, who closed his rookie campaign at 28-7. "I just wanted to go out at that point to try and make the team look the best."

The Lions wrestler knew Wilmington was a tough draw, but he also knew that Harvard would have been a handful as well for a Lions team that was real young at some positions and forfeited four weight classes against Wilmington.

"It's pretty unfortunate we had to face Wilmington, but we knew Harvard was really tough as well," he said.

Nigru closed his junior campaign at 28-14 and was an individual runner-up at regionals. He's hoping some hard work in the off-season can help both him and the Lisle program make more strides next winter.

"It felt great to go out with a victory," said Nigru, who avenged a regular-season loss to the Wildcats with Tuesday's win. "I hope to come back and do better next year, and I want us to get back to where we were just a couple years ago when we took fourth (in state)."

Lisle coach John Davis liked the effort his squad put forth against a Wildcats' lineup that included nine state qualifiers.

"We got beat by a better team today," Davis said. "We had some people out, but we've got to learn from it. We got a solid little nucleus coming back, but they've got to want to get better. And I think they will."