The 54th Annual South Dakota State High School Wrestling Championship Tournaments will take place this Friday & Saturday, featuring the Class ‘A’ Tournament in Watertown and the Class ‘B’ event in Aberdeen.
A total of 11 returning individual state champions will be participating, as well as Defending Team Champions Canton and Pierre T.F. Riggs. Both tournaments can be viewed live via South Dakota Public Broadcasting’s website: sports.sdpb.org.
The Class ‘B’ field features six returning Individual Champions, with two brackets featuring a potential clash of defending title holders: Nolan Richie (Webster; 2012 113-lb. champ) and Ryan Schuman (Tri-Valley; 2012 120-lb. champ) in the 126-pound class, and Jace Christiansen (Flandreau; 2012 132-lb. champ) and Alex Davies (Canton; 2012 138-lb. champ) in the 145-pound bracket. Other returning individual champions include Luke Loudenberg of Howard and Eugene Martin from Kingsbury County.
On the Class ‘A’ side, five Individual Champions will be back looking for consecutive titles. Included in that mix will be Sioux Falls Roosevelt junior Troy Kiggins; Kiggins will be in search of his third straight title, after capturing crowns at 106 pounds in 2011 and 113 pounds in 2012. Kiggins will have to defeat fellow returning champion David Potratz from Sioux Falls Washington (106 pounds) to complete the three-peat. Other returning champions in Class ‘A’ inclue Caleb Stoltenburg (Pierre), Nate Rotert (Spearfish/Lead-Deadwood) and Tanner Lambert (Dakota Valley).
