Lincoln East, Battle Creek Breakthrough; Skutt, Burwell Capture Titles
By Dru Kastler – For the Nebraska School Activities Association
The 2025 NSAA Dual Wrestling Championships were contested on Saturday, February 8th at the Buffalo County Fairgrounds.
Lincoln East (Class A) and Battle Creek (Class C) finally broke through for their first state titles in school history after multiple trips to the finals, while Omaha Skutt won their third consecutive Class B state championship and Burwell survived a loaded Class D field to win their second state title in school history.
Here is a recap of Saturday’s event.
Class A: Lincoln East captures first State Dual Title in school history with an unbeaten season
The Spartans of Lincoln East are no stranger to the NSAA State Wrestling Duals. They’ve qualified eight consecutive seasons when the event has been held. During that stretch, they’ve been the runner-up four times (2018-2020, 2023).
They left little doubt as to who the top team was at the Buffalo County Fairgrounds on Saturday, as they won every dual by 22 or more points to cap an unbeaten dual season.
East co-Head Coach Jeff Rutledge knew this could be a great year for the Spartans.
“At the beginning of the year we knew we were going to have a really good team,” Rutledge said. “We have phenomenal leaders. We had a really great summer of training, where we had some seniors that have been in the program really step up, and want to teach the Spartan way to the freshmen.”
Their path to the title went through three Heartland Athletic Conference foes – Norfolk, Kearney and Grand Island. They had beaten all three during the season, but their most recent dual vs Kearney came down to the wire. They left no doubt this time, with a 44-19 win in the semifinals, before defeating Grand Island 45-23 in the championship dual.
Grand Island finished in second after two hard fought wins to make the finals. Their backs were against the wall in the opening round against North Platte, as they needed a pin or a technical fall in the last match to advance. Angel Ren Jose was trailing late in that match, before getting a throw and a fall to win the match and the dual for the Islanders.
In their second dual, the Islanders outpaced Papillion-LaVista by winning five of the final seven matches to advance to the championship.
The hometown Kearney Bearcats bounced back from the loss to Lincoln East with a 43-30 victory over Papillion-LaVista for third. North Platte rebounded from their heartbreaking opening round loss by defeating Omaha Bryan, and then Elkhorn South to finish in fifth.
Class B: Skyhawks win key matchups to outlast Bennington
The Class B championship match between Bennington and Omaha Skutt was one of the more highly anticipated duals of the weekend.
On the strength of some key victories, the Skyhawks outlasted the Badgers 34-27 in the finals. At 144, Isaac Christo defeated Bennington’s Brayden Kreikemeier 8-3, avenging a one-point loss from just a few weeks ago. Cole Urbanec, who has been competing at 175, was down at 157 and scored a 7-5 victory there over Bennington’s Dominic Gillett.
The moment Omaha Skutt moved firmly into the driver’s seat was at 175, where returning state champion Riley Johnson bumped up from 165 and defeated returning state runner-up Ty Bouaphakeo by technical fall.
Coach DeVetter knew it wouldn’t be easy.
“Bennington’s got a great team, Waverly’s got a great team,” he said. “There’s a lot of good teams. I was really happy with how we wrestled, it was a lot of fun and we’re looking forward to the next couple of weeks.”
“We have really good leadership on our team, and they led the way.”
The Skyhawks came out of the gate firing on Saturday morning, with an impressive 73-6 victory over Ashland-Greenwood, winning 13 out of 14 weights. In the semifinals against Waverly, Skutt’s Ben Ziola defeated the Vikings’ Grey Klucas 7-3 in a rematch of the 2024 B106 state title match. Skutt went on to win seven of the first eight contested matches and cruised to a 54-19 victory.
The third place dual between York and Waverly came down to the very last match. The Dukes had a large lead, but Waverly won the final four matches. York needed to avoid a pin in the last match, and Ethyn Schade did just that.
Class C: In their 10th appearance, Battle Creek captures elusive first title
Also, no strangers to the state wrestling duals, Battle Creek had qualified for 10 out of the past 11 tournaments. They were the runner-up in 2017, 2022 and 2023. Last season they lost to Minden on tiebreaking criteria in the semifinals.
Now, after winning the 2024 NSAA state team title last February, the Braves added their first state dual title to their impressive resume by defeating Pierce (51-17), Minden (43-25) and top-seed David City (53-16) in the championship match.
Battle Creek head coach Cody Wintz was happy for his team to get it done.
“It feels good. We’ve been here a lot and we’ve run into some really good teams over the years,” he said. “This year we had the best team here and we were able to finally get it done. Credit to our guys, they really wanted to get this Dual Title into our trophy case. They did a good job in all three duals.”
David City reached the finals for the first time since 2016. They avenged their only regular season loss to Syracuse in the semifinals. Syracuse would go on to finish third over Minden by winning the final two matches. Pierce won two matches after their opening round setback to Battle Creek to finish in 5th.
Class D: Burwell survives a loaded field
Out of all four classes, Class D seemed to be the most up in the air as far as who would be hoisting the trophy at the end of the day in Kearney. In the end, it was top-seeded and unbeaten Burwell that would survive undefeated.
The Longhorns did not have an easy road to the finals.
After an opening 52-27 victory against Loomis, they had to knock off the reigning Class D champs Aquinas Catholic, who were gunning for their fifth consecutive title after winning Class C in 2020 and 2022, then Class D in 2023 and 2024.
In the dual against Aquinas, the Longhorns won eight out of 14 matches, including seven of the first ten to take control and not look back. Top ranked Brody Jensen sealed the deal with a pin in the second to last match to clinch the victory.
Head Coach Evan Gideon said he knew, “(Aquinas) wouldn’t go down easy,” and that “they were the four-time reigning champs by no surprise.”
On the bottom half of the bracket, there was excitement out of the gate as two of the opening round duals in Class D came down to the wire. Sixth-seeded Central Valley avenged two regular season losses to No. 3 Plainview, and second-seeded Wilcox-Hildreth outlasted Weeping Water 42-36.
Both Central Valley and Wilcox-Hildreth had large and loud crowds to help root on their teams in the semifinals, but in the end it was Central Valley with their second straight ‘upset’ by knocking off the two-seed Falcons and moving onto the finals.
In the championship dual, Burwell once again set the tone early, winning the first four matches. Brody Jensen clinched the victory for the Longhorns with three matches remaining. The final score ended up at 40-30.
Coach Gideon said he thought it might “be a seven and seven split going in.” Referring to each team potentially winning seven matches and the dual coming down to bonus points.
He gave credit to 150 pounder Kolton Thoene for picking up a big major decision victory as a key point in the dual. “Kolton Thoene picked up a big win – a major on top of it – giving us an extra bonus point and Brody Jensen put an exclamation point on it at the end.”
This marks the second state title in school history for Burwell.
Dru Kastler was a two-time state champion wrestler for Ord High School in 2004 and 2005. He was part of a group that founded NEWrestle in 2016. It has since become Nebraska’s most in-depth source for wrestling coverage in the state.
Editor Tony Chapman is a freelance writer based in Grand Island. He has written for multiple Nebraska daily and weekly newspapers. His weekly Harvest Sports Newsletter covers a wide variety of Nebraska prep sports.