Road Tripping With Lowell Wrestling

Members of the wrestling team cheer on Jackson Blum in his finals match in Kaukana, Wisconsin.

The wrestling program gave the Ledger exclusive access for their trip to Wisconsin

Justin Scott - Sports Reporter

4 Jan. 2025

Condensed from a few days to just two, Lowell Wrestling’s trip to Kaukana, WI, is one of the longest such journeys for any high school team at Lowell ever. At about six hours, it’s not the longest trip possible. Heck, football could be making a trip to Marquette next year and that’s slightly farther (I’m not saying this is happening, but a home and home wouldn’t be impossible). It’s still quite the haul though. We were able to get an exclusive chance at covering the team this past weekend. It’s a privilege very few media members get, and it was certainly a fun trip, culminating with one individual champion and a third place team finish in one of the best tournaments in the country.

On Friday we took off from Cherry Creek Elementary in the early morning hours under a winter weather advisory. 13 wrestlers competed while coaches Matt Dood, Cody Dennis, and Ross Pennock joined Head Coach R.J. Boudro for the tournament. Wrestlers Everett Dressander and Max Bigard helped with filming.

After leaving the state of Michigan, the roads were clear and we were well on our way to Wisconsin.

The Cheesehead Tournament has been going on for over two decades, now in its 26th consecutive year at Kaukana High School. Kaukana, a school of just over 1,200 students, doesn’t look the part. The school is huge, fit with a gym nearly the size of a football field and a large practice facility next to an auxiliary gym which housed the team. There were 12 mats total, dwarfing the five mats Lowell can host.

Teams came from as far as Oklahoma with most out of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota. Lowell was the lone Michigan team that competed.

Max Bigard and Gabe Olin practicing on Friday night.

Action stretched over two days kicking off on Friday night to a packed gymnasium at Kaukana which could be classified as controlled chaos. Long routes to and from matches, continuous traffic of coaches, wrestlers, and fans in between rotating matches. The tournament itself? Very well run.

After day one, the team got back to the hotel around 10:00pm where Head Coach R.J. Boudro addressed the team.

“We talk about humility a lot in this program, and I feel like some of you got humbled today,” Boudro told his team. “We had some tough losses, but let’s focus on wrestling hard and the winning will take care of itself,” Boudro said. It certainly was true, some wrestlers took losses they weren’t used to. It’s not often, or maybe ever that we’ll see a wrestler as talented as Casey Engle get tech falled, but that’s what happens when you wrestle in a tournament with 11 nationally ranked wrestlers.

Lowell Wrestling Head Coach R.J. Boudro addresses the team in their hotel on Friday night.

Lowell brought two nationally ranked wrestlers, Jarrett Smith (#24) and Jackson Blum (#12). Lowell was also one of three nationally ranked teams; Southeast Polk (#17, IA), Lowell (#30), and Joliet Catholic (#44, IL).

After an early morning 6:00am wakeup call, the team got ready for day two. One part of wrestling that goes unseen, weight. Weigh-ins happened before each day and wrestlers often struggle to be at the weight needed to help their team. It’s something that wrestlers are used to, and something that I thought to myself, “man I’m glad I don’t have to do that,” as me, the coaching staff, and some wrestler families enjoyed some wings late that night. All well worth it of course though. Lowell had no issues with weigh ins.

On the bus to the high school on Saturday, Boudro again addressed the team, “Last night I was thinking how grateful we are to have the opportunity today, to be able to go to a tournament like this and compete and get better.”

The first whistle blew at 8:30am central time and day two was underway. Oh and we mentioned 11 nationally ranked wrestlers? There were over 200 state ranked wrestlers. This was one of those tournaments that is tougher than the Michigan individual state tournament. Jesuit alone had 16 state-ranked wrestlers. Lowell had 13, missing Juan Acosta at heavyweight due to injury.

Iowa’s Southeast Polk was the podium team, not unexpected given their national ranking of #18. It was their second straight Cheesehead win in the home of the Kaukana Galloping Ghosts. A unique nickname given to a tradition dating back to the 1920’s where the term “ghosts” were used to describe the team’s speedy running on Halloween night. Not that different than how Lowell got their nickname.

So in the 1940’s, a student dressed as a ghost on a horse, and delivered the game ball to the referee. A tradition that still exists today. The Galloping Ghosts are joined by some other odd nicknames in their conference, including the “Terrors” and “Papermakers”. Kaukana finished fourth. Louisiana’s Jesuit High School of New Orleans broke from the unranked pack to finish second. It was close between Lowell and Jesuit, one placement match separated the two.

Below are results for all of the Lowell Wrestlers who competed.

John Carter McKay - 106

The Lowell freshman finished 5-3 with a win in the 11th place match over Trenton VanSchyndel of Kaukana.

Jarrett Smith – 113

Smith, a junior, finished 3rd after losing to the top ranked wrestler from Iowa (SE Polk). That kid ended up beating the #1 kid in the nation in the finals. 8-1 record. Smith is committed to Stanford University.

Cole Cichocki – 120

4-4 record with a win in the thirteenth place match by technical fall. Was one of 11 wrestlers to win his opening match, which in this tournament was critical for scoring.

Carter Cichocki – 126

The defending state champion had a great close to his tournament with three straight wins, including his final match in sudden victory with a takedown. 4-4 record and 11th place finish.

Jackson Blum – 132

It wasn’t always easy, including a semifinal match that went into overtime where Blum completed a takedown in SV1. He closed the deal with a win over top ranked Wisconsin wrestler and South Dakota State commit Liam Neitzel with a second period takedown and two minute ride-out. Blum is committed to Indiana University.

Jackson Blum can become Lowell’s third ever four-time individual champion in March.

Cody Foss – 138

Foss went 3-5 with an opening decision over Perry Baehr of the hosts Kaukana. A couple of close decisions went against him.

“There were no real easy wins in this tournament,” Lowell coaches said about the difficulty of this competition.

Logan Dawson – 144

Three straight wins and a 5-2 record to close out the tournament, Dawson had plenty of offense recording four technical falls.

Trevor Boone – 150

Finished the tournament strong with back-to-back falls including a 28 second pin of his own in the 11th place match.

Trevor Boone grapples with Logan Dawson in warmups in Kaukana’s fieldhouse.

Colten Barney - 157

Barney had a 21 second fall in his win over Vincent Jacobs. The fastest fall of the tournament for Lowell.

Owen Segorski – 165

After four straight technical falls, the Michigan State commit won two decisions before falling to eventual champion and #24 ranked Liam Crook in the semifinals. Went on to win his third place match.

Gabe Olin – 175

Bad luck as Olin got two byes, and all three of the matches he did get to wrestler were narrow losses that went down to the wire.

Casey Engle – 189

In one of the more difficult weight classes, Engle took a tech fall to the eventual champion Guy Fraley of Homestead. Bounce back to win four of five for a 5-2 finish and 9th place.

Braylen Meeuwsen – 215

Perhaps the best tournament of any Lowell wrestler, the freshman came back after a second round loss with three straight wins to get to the quarterfinals. He lost to a top 10 wrestler out of Arrowhead (WI) via a 2-0 decision. He lost to that same wrestler in the 5th place match. His other two losses? Also to one wrestler. A weird tournament, but a good one.

Photos