There’s a special place on the wall of Simley’s wrestling room reserved for the names of state champions.

Austin Grzywinski’s name was not on there prior to this week. It’s going up now.

After placing second at state a year ago, the Spartans senior got the job done in his last go at it Saturday, winning the Class 2A, 114-pound title with a 7-0 decision over Watertown-Mayer’s Joel Friederichs in St. Paul.

Grzywinski’s name isn’t the only new addition to Simley’s winner wall.

Simley freshman Turner Ross completed a 48-win season by winning the Class 2A, 107-pound title — his first state championship.

Eighth grader Justus Heeg also claimed his first title, winning at 133 pounds.

Simley senior Cash Raymond had a chance to do the same in the 152-pound bout, which wasn’t completed at the time this edition went to print.

Cash’s sister, Charli, won her third straight state title. The freshman completed an undefeated season with a major victory to win the 118-pound crown and is still on pace to win six titles for her career.

Two titles

Eastview’s Riley Myers won a state title in 2022 — the inaugural season of girls wrestling under the MSHSL umbrella. After a second-place finish a year ago, the senior wrapped her high school career Saturday with a 130-pound crown.

Myers noted this time around, she managed to truly savor the entire experience.

The hard way

The 139-pound, Class 3A bracket may have been one of the toughest in the state. There is no better example of that than the first-round match — usually a no-contest in favor of the favorites — where top-seeded Davis Parrow of Farmington trailed Shakopee’s Connor Warren for much of the match before emerging with a 9-6 victory.

Fast forward 36 hours, and Parrow edged out another tight one — a 3-2 decision over Eden Prairie’s Charles Vanier — to claim a state crown.

Vengeance

After falling to St. Michael-Albertville eighth grader Lincoln Robideau in Thursday’s Class 3A team final, Mounds View junior Brett Swenson got his vengeance Saturday night via a 5-1 decision over Robideau to win the Class 3A, 114-pound individual crown.

History maker

Northfield’s Caley Graber, who became the first girl in state history to win a match in the individual tournament against a boy and reached the Class 3A, 107 pound semifinals, placed fifth in her bracket.

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State wrestling tournament primer

Faced with a must-win situation, coaches often will talk about the need for their best players to be their best players.

The Gophers and coach Brad Frost found themselves in that situation on Saturday afternoon at Ridder Arena after a surprising 5-4 loss to Minnesota State Mankato the night before in the opening game of their best-of-three WCHA quarterfinal series.

The Gophers’ top line delivered in spectacular fashion, combining for 11 points, including nine in the first period, as the Gophers jumped on the Mavericks early in a 7-1 victory.

The deciding game will be played Sunday afternoon at Ridder, with the winner moving on to the WCHA Final Faceoff, beginning Friday at Ridder.

Sophomore left winger Josefin Bouveng led the charge with two goals and three assists, right winger Abbey Murphy had two goals and two assists and center Ella Huber collected a goal and an assist.

“They led us really, really well,” Frost said. “Not just in the locker room and on the bench, but kind of putting their money where their mouth is.”

Bouveng said she and her linemates didn’t talk more than usual about the need to be productive. “But I think we all knew what was going on, that we would have to play well,” she said. “We started out pretty well, and that set the tone for the whole game.”

Asked if she thought it was her best performance as a Gopher, Bouveng said, “It’s hard to say, but we scored a lot of goals in the quarterfinals, so I will value that pretty high.”

Frost acknowledged that he didn’t sleep well Friday night after the performance by his team. He woke several times, he said, entering notes into his phone. He shared those notes with the team before the game.

“There was some stern messaging,” he said. “Here we are in Game 36, and it should be automatic by now in terms of how we play. We just went a little rogue (Friday) night.”

Huber expressed her confidence after the loss on Friday that the Gophers would bounce back.  Bouveng said she felt the same way.

“It was all up to us,”  she said. “We know we are the more skilled team, and if we decide to play the right way we can beat them. I’m glad we did that today.”

Bouveng gave the Gophers a 1-0 lead with an unassisted goal at 4:24. After forcing a turnover inside the Mavericks’ blue line, she weaved her way toward the net and beat Mankato goaltender Hailey Hansen on a wrist shot from the slot.

Huber scored her 15th of the season and fourth in two games when she buried a centering pass from Murphy from behind the net. Bouveng scored her second of the game less than two minutes later.

Using one of her signature moves, Murphy circled the Mankato net with the puck before setting Bouveng up in the slot. The Mavericks got on the board with a power-play goal at 14:14, but a 4-on-4 goal by Madeline Wethington and a power-play goal by Murphy gave the Gophers a 5-1 lead heading into the first intermission.

“Once we got that first one — and then second one — we’ve just been preaching that we need to continue to extend the lead,” Frost said. “We did that with five in the first.”

Second-period goals by Murphy and Madison Kaiser put the Gophers up 7-1. Playing with the big lead, the Gophers held the Mavericks to three shots on goal in the period and 18 in the game.

“We played with so much better structure, discipline, the details,” Frost said. “When we play like that we are going to be tough to beat.”

Briefly

Murphy leads the nation with 33 goals, the most by a Gophers player since Dani Cameranisi had 33 in the 2015-16 season. One more goal would tie Murphy with Hannah Brandt for the seventh-most number of goals in a season in Gophers history.

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The uphill climb to make the playoffs just got that much harder for the Wild.

After suffering a 3-1 loss to the Blues on Saturday night at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis, the Wild find themselves eight points back of the final playoff spot. That gap is hard to believe considering a week ago the Wild were among the hottest teams in the NHL and had moved within two points of the final playoff spot.

That’s what losing three straight games will do. Remember the hard work from last month that helped the Wild dig themselves out of a hole? It’s rather meaningless at this point.

Not only did the loss serve as a blow to the Wild as they try to claw back into contention, it also spoiled the highly anticipated return of winger Mason Shaw. He suited up for the first time since tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee roughly 11 months ago. It was a long road back for Shaw, and the game was the manifestation of his tenacity to never give up.

“I was pretty calm before the game,” Shaw told reporters in St. Louis. “It felt like I was straight back where I was supposed to be.”

If only it would’ve ended with a better result.

After an evenly matched start to the game, the Wild fell behind 1-0 when a shot from the point took a wonky bounce in front of goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury. Though it looked like Fleury might have made the save at the last moment, the replay showed that the puck fully crossed the goal line.

Credit the Wild for fighting back. The way things have been going it would’ve been easy for them to hang their heads. Instead, they responded by stepping up big time on the penalty kill, then parlayed that into some solid play for prolonged stretches.

The reward came in the second period when defenseman Jon Merrill fired from the slot and beat Blues goaltender Jordan Binnington to tie the game at 1-1.

That lead proved to be shortlived, however, as Blues winger Jake Neighbors made it 2-1 on the power play a few minutes later. Thinking perhaps Fleury had been interfered with in his crease, head coach John Hynes challenged the call on the ice. The officials quickly confirmed the goal.

As the Wild tried to net the equalizer in the third period, they couldn’t stay out of their own way, taking a few penalties that put them in a bad position. Any thoughts of a comeback ended in the final minute as Blues defenseman Torey Krug finalized the score at 3-1 with a long-range empty-net goal.

Now the Wild head into a matchup with the lowly San Jose Sharks on Sunday night at Xcel Energy Center more desperate than ever.

“We’re in the middle of a fight right now,” Shaw told reporters in St. Louis. “There’s a lot of hockey left and it’s a never say die attitude with this group.”

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