Park wrestling: Linssen, Wolfpack start strong at Lakeville North invite

Junior Cody Linssen helped lead the Park wrestling team to a fourth-place finish out of 14 teams at the Lakeville North Paul Wolf Panther Invite with a dominating performance. Linssen, a junior who was an all-state wrester for Park a year ago, had four pins en route to a first-place finish at 220 pounds. He is currently ranked No. 1 in the state in the 220-pound weight class in Class AAA.

The finish was a strong start for Park, which has just three seniors on the roster. The Wolfpack had 112.5 points. Hudson, Wis. won the tournament with 183 points, followed by Scott West (172), which is ranked fourth in Class AA and 13th ranked Lakeville North (117). Park finished ahead of two Section 3AAA opponents in the tournament – Henry Sibley (sixth with 107.5 points) and Eagan (13th with 75 points). Park finished ninth in the same tournament a year ago.

The Wolfpack has six of 13 wrestlers place in the tourney. In addition to Linssen, Park freshman Collin LaBrosse placed second at 113 pounds losing to fifth-ranked Taylor Venz of Farmington 6-4 in the finals and freshman Zack Wills placed second at 182 pounds. Wills pinned Pavel Swenson of Woodbury in the quarterfinals and won on disqualification/injury default in the semifinals over Trystan Hansen of Lakeville North. Also, sophomore Cory Flaata (170 pounds) and junior David Giadyu (145 pounds) both finished in fifth place at the tournament, going 4-1 on the day. At 132 pounds, sophomore Daniel Duval placed sixth going 3-2 on the day .

“I am very pleased were we ended up at the end of the day,” Park head coach Jim LaBrosse said. “Obviously we were looking to get nine or 10 kids place, but we wrestled hard overall and I was pleased to see kids fight off their backs, something we didn’t do very well a year ago with our younger wrestlers.”

Park hosts the Wolfpack Duals this coming Saturday. Eight teams will be participating in the dual-meet format: Park, Stillwater, Goodhue, Blue Earth, Tartan, Cannon Falls, Kimball and Chatfield. The first round starts at 9:30 a.m. with the finals expected to begin at roughly 3 p.m.

“We are still in the process of juggling certain weight classes and getting kids down to lower weights to help solidify our lineup. We should be a stronger team come Saturday,” LaBrosse said.

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