Gallatin’s #1 ranked 106-pound wrestler Ross Critten leads a group of six Bulldog wrestlers that will represent Gallatin High School this weekend at the MSHSAA Class 1 Wrestling Championship held in Mizzou Arena on the University of Missouri-Columbia campus.
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Gallatin finished fourth among 14 teams at last weekend’s Class 1, District 3 Tournament held at Richmond High School. All four top team finishers, Richmond, Centralia, Marceline and Gallatin, entered the tournament among the top ten ranked teams in the state.
Critten, a freshman, continued his season-long winning streak against Class 1 competition by pinning three straight opponents before winning a 9-1 district championship bout over Brookfield’s James Jury. Critten, 42-2, will face Albany’s Jeremy Wimer, 37-13, in Thursday’s first round of state action.
Declan Schweizer and Graydee Rains each made it to district championship matches, but both fell to top-ranked, and state-ranked, opponents.
Schweizer, wrestling at 152 pounds, beat opponents from Hamilton, Richmond and Brookfield before going up against Marceline’s Alex Cupp, the #6 ranked wrestler in Class 1. Schweizer battled to a 3-3 tie in the final period before falling, 9-4, for second place. The GHS senior, 32-10, will face Lathrop’s Payton Wolfe, 37-19, in his first round state match.
Rains’s championship match was a battle between the #2 and #3 ranked 195-pounders. Rains’s opponent, Brookfield’s #2 Richard Menconi, owned two previous wins, both by close decision, against the GHS sophomore. In a hard-fought title match, Menconi came out on top, 6-3, to win the district championship. Rains, 42-4, will face Holden’s
Dylan Wilson, 37-14, in his first round state match.
Drayton Harris and Wyatt Bird each brought home third place district medals from Saturday.
Harris won his first two matches but fell to #1 ranked Alex Hollingsworth of Lexington in the semifinal round after wrestling to an early 2-2 tie. Harris, 39-9, will wrestle North Callaway’s Jadon Henry, 45-8, in first round state action on Thursday.
Bird wrestled in the 145-pound weight class along with four of the state’s other top-ranked wrestlers. The Bulldog senior won a pair of matches but fell to #3 ranked Carter Kinkead of Centralia, in a back-and-forth semifinal round. Bird’s 4-3 loss dropped him into the consolation rounds, where he went 2-0, beating Lexington’s Cayden Bertze, 7-1, for third place. Bird, 38-7, will take on Braeden Campbell of Summit Christian Academy, 
45-9, on Thursday.
Keegan Allen finished fourth for Gallatin in the district’s 113-pound class after wrestling to a 3-2 record on Saturday. A loss to Richmond’s Rance Waigand, the #2 ranked wrestler in the state, dropped Allen into the consolation rounds, where he defeated Hamilton’s Chance Cummings to get to the third place match, where he fell to Marceline’s Colton Fisher. Allen, 26-8, will face Whitfield’s Wade Raeman, 34-9, on Thursday. Raeman is the #2 ranked 113-pounder in the state.
Three other Bulldog wrestlers, Caleb Boyd, Tom Crouse and Michael McLey, all fell just one district victory short of qualifying for the state tournament.
Wrestling in Columbia begins at 10 a.m. on Thursday and continues through Saturday.