Ken Kraft Midlands Championships
9 Mustangs Set to Wrestle in 60th Midlands Championships
12/28/2024 1:00:00 PM | Wrestling
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. — The Cal Poly wrestling team wraps up the 2024 calendar year with a trip to the Midwest to compete in the 60th annual Ken Kraft Midlands Championships hosted by Northwestern on Sunday and Monday.
Action from NOW Arena in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, starts at 7:30 a.m. PST Sunday. Wrestling on the second and final day Monday begins at 8:30 a.m. PST with first-place bouts taking place at 1 p.m. PST.
The prestigious two-day tournament will be streamed live on B1G Network+ with the purchase of a subscription with live scoring available via TrackWrestling.
Twelve of the top 25 ranked teams in the country will be participating in the tourney, including No. 5 Ohio State, No. 8 Virginia Tech, No. 9 Michigan, No. 11 Illinois, No. 12 Cornell and No. 15 Stanford. Nine Big Ten schools are set to take the mat in Illinois along with Pac-12 foe Oregon State, who is currently receiving votes in the NWCA Coaches Poll.
Nine Cal Poly wrestlers will compete in the Midlands Championships — graduate student Legend Lamer (157 pounds), redshirt juniors Abe Hinrichsen (157), Cole Jackson (285) and Trevor Tinker, redshirt sophomores Koda Holeman (125) and Cash Stewart (165), redshirt freshman Blake Hinrichsen (174) and true freshmen Jagger French (149) and Alek VanBebber (141).
Only two of the Mustangs’ six nationally ranked wrestlers are set to take part in the tournament — Holeman, who is the 30th-ranked 125-pounder in the country, and Tinker, the 29th-ranked heavyweight.
Tinker and Holeman both had phenomenal performances in their last action on the mat as they were the only two Mustang wrestlers to go 2-0 across a pair of home duals against Cal Baptist and Northwestern on Dec. 19. Tinker put up a whopping 36 points across the two duals, picking up a pair of dominant technical fall victories to improve to 12-5 on the season. Holeman pinned Cal Baptist’s Mitchell Neiner before scoring an upset victory over No. 32 Dedrick Navarro from Northwestern by an 8-6 decision to move to 9-5 on the year.
At last year’s Ken Kraft Midlands Championships, Cal Poly had a historic showing with a program-record three placers — Zeth Romney third at 133, Tinker sixth at 285 and Kemp eighth at 174. As a team, the Mustangs placed 13th, their second highest finish in school history at the tournament.
Following the Midlands Championships, Cal Poly heads to Cedar Falls, Iowa, on Jan. 10-11 to wrestle in the NWCA National Dual Meet Championships held inside Northern Iowa’s UNI-Dome.
Cal Poly
125: No. 30/32 Koda Holeman (9-5)
141: Alek VanBebber (6-6)
149: Jagger French (6-6)
157: Abe Hinrichsen (4-2)
157: Legend Lamer (6-6)
165: Cash Stewart (5-4)
174: Blake Hinrichsen (5-3)
285: Cole Jackson (7-7)
285: No. 29/33 Trevor Tinker (12-5)
InterMat/FloWrestling rankings
