The Northampton wrestling team placed five grapplers in the finals and crowned two champions last weekend in the District XI AAA individual tournament at Liberty High School.

Trey Wagner started the final session of the night by downing Nazareth’s Jack Campbell 2-1 in TB2 in the 133-pound final. After Wagner rode out the Blue Eagle in TB1 Campbell elected to concede the escape and work for a takedown that never came.

The now two-time district champion commented on the win, “Jack’s a really good opponent. Any good opponent I get to face here is an opportunity to get better. Obviously, this is the first step looking for the repeat (as state champion), but I’ve still got a long way to go.”

If Wagner repeats as regional champion this weekend, that finals win would mark the junior’s 100th career varsity win for Northampton.

Brayden Wenrich claimed his first district title in a battle of nationally-ranked freshmen when he beat Bethlehem Catholic’s Nico Emili 8-4 at 107 pounds. Wenrich was at 114 when the two schools met in a dual in December, so this was their first ever high school meeting.

The K-Kid scored a first period takedown and added 4 nearfall points to get out to a 7-0 lead and take care of business the rest of the way.

“It feels good to accomplish one of the goals that I’ve set. I’ve been coming here since I was five years old, watching Danny Moran and Julian Chlebove win their district titles, so it feels good to get one of my own,” explained Wenrich.

Perhaps the most anticipated final of the night featured another pair of nationally-ranked wrestlers from Northampton and Becahi. Gabe Ballard took on 2-time defending state champion Keanu Dillard and pushed the Lehigh-bound junior to TB2 before being ridden out to fall 2-1.

Chase Grabfelder used two dominant tech falls and a pin in less than a minute to advance to his first-ever varsity tournament final. There he dropped a 10-2 major decision to Cade Campbell of Nazareth. The junior will be looking to qualify for his first state tournament this week.

Gavin Grell finished second at heavyweight for the second-straight year. He avenged his district duals loss to Noah Knorp with a 4-2 decision over the NDGP Crusader in the semifinals. However in the final, Daniel Schiffert of Freedom scored the decisive takedown with 8 seconds left in regulation to win 4-1.

Outside of the five finalists, only one other K-Kid advanced to regionals this weekend at Liberty.

Ryan Marano bounced back from a semifinal loss to Emilio Albanese of Emmaus to beat Michael Good of Nazareth to make the third-place match. He dropped a 1-0 decision to Jasiah Pagan of Liberty to finish fourth.

Senior Devlin Chevere fell 9-6 to Jorge Moya of Parkland to finish 6th, one place away from advancing.

The Konkrete Kids finished fourth in the team standings.

(1) Nazareth 233.0, (2) Notre Dame-Green Pond 219.5, (3) Bethlehem Catholic 197.0, (4) Northampton 179.5, (5) Easton 169.0