Owatonna, Blooming Prairie Wrestling Have New Look This Season

Official practice began for high school wrestling Monday. Owatonna has a new coaching tandem. Blooming Prairie will co-op this season with Hayfield to form Westfield.

Owatonna High School graduate Scott Seykora will team up with Northfield native Adam Woitalla to lead the top-five ranked Huskies. Seykora has been on the Owatonna coaching staff for 12 years. He was a member of the 1996 and 1997 state tournament teams. Woitalla coached with his father in Northfield and wrestled for former Owatonna and Northfield coach Cliff Casteel, who stepped down after four seasons with OHS. Woitalla and Seykora will be guests of Todd Walkingstick on the Beyond the Game feature at Owatonnalive.com to be posted Thursday November 24.

Owatonna is No.4AAA in the Guillotine preseason poll. Huskies' senior Brandon Moen has committed to Division I Eastern Michigan and OHS junior Peyton Robb recently announced his verbal commitment to South Dakota State University. Each is a defending state champ and top-ranked in their weight class for this coming season.

The Huskies open the season December 3 at the Faribault individual tournament. Their December schedule includes the Christmas tournament and The Clash in Rochester before opening their home schedule against defending Big Nine champ Albert Lea on January 5.

Blooming Prairie wrestlers are going from the Awesome Blossoms to the Razorbacks as their co-op with Hayfield goes into effect. Blooming Prairie Activities Director Ali Mach told KRFO that the wrestlers came up with ideas for a team name and mascot. The student bodies then voted and the team will be known as the Westfield Razorbacks. Each school has had strong individuals over recent years but not enough depth to consistently field a full team. Chad Gimbel and Brad Heydt will act as co-coaches. Westfield opens its season December 3 at Springfield. Razorbacks Ethan Arett, Colton Krell, Mitch Oswald and Trey Chatman are all top 10 rated in the preseason poll.

Triton wrestling has a new coach with Tyler Johnson. The Cobras open their campaign December 1 at Fillmore Central. Medford will start December 3 at Winona. NRHEG wrestling begins with a meet at Pine Island on December 1.