Long Prairie-Grey Eagle/Browerville wins Class 1A wrestling title

Ted Stacey was down a point, and just 10 seconds were left on the clock. Long Prairie-Grey Eagle/Browerville was leading at the time of Stacey's 145-pound match, but the opponent in the Class 1A championship match, Kenyon-Wanamingo, had an advantage at the upper weights yet to come.

It wasn't quite time to worry, but there was room for concern among the Wolves faithful.

Stacey put an end to their worries, getting a headlock on his foe, then throwing him for good measure for an 8-4 victory.

And with it, the LPGE/Browerville crowd could relax. With momentum squarely on its side, LPGE/Browerville went on to win the first boys' team championship in school history, defeating Kenyon-Wanamingo 35-27.

"It's something Coach talks about all the time: Go a full six minutes," said Stacey, a junior. "It's something I pride myself in. Never let up."

"We knew [Kenyon-Wanamingo] was going to come at us with some momentum," Wolves coach Jacob Lorentz said. "We just had to weather the storm. Ted, his gas tank? I've never seen anything like it. He always get big points for us."

The impetus for LPGE/Browerville's title came last year, when the Wolves finished fourth in Class 1A, but the genesis was much longer ago.

"Last year absolutely helped," Lorentz said. "Our goal was to do better than we did last year."

The championship just confirmed what Lorentz saw in these wrestlers when he started coaching them years ago.

"We've been at this a long time," Lorentz said. "They've been together since they were 5 years old. They've become a family. We knew this was possible."

Winning the title, Stacey said, was the culmination of years of championship banter.

"We started talking about it seriously when I was in eighth grade," he said. "I knew we could do this."