KALAMAZOO — It’s usually Whitehall coming up with big wins in key moments at the team finals in Kalamazoo, but against other top programs, sometimes the tables turn the other direction.
That’s what happened Saturday in the Vikings’ Division 3 semifinal clash with Yale, where the Bulldogs, runners-up in 2025, scored some huge early wins and stunningly routed Whitehall 56-8. That loss sent Whitehall home one match sooner than the Vikings had hoped. (Yale later fell to superpower Dundee in the finals to finish second for the second straight season.)
Things turned in Yale’s direction even before the wrestling began. The starting weight was set at 144 pounds, which meant the first few bouts would be at weights where Yale was extremely strong and Whitehall was less so. On top of that, the Bulldogs won the coin toss, enabling them to choose which bouts they’d have the right to declare their wrestler second and get a look at who the Vikings would send to the mat.
Each of Yale’s first three wrestlers were state qualifiers, and unsurprisingly they delivered, scoring 16 team points to give the team a big lead. However, the Bulldogs didn’t have another state qualifier slated to wrestle in any of the next five bouts, so Whitehall had an opening to storm back.
It appeared the Vikings were going to do just that for most of the 165-pound bout between Colten Kyser and Hunter Cole. While both wrestlers were regional qualifiers who hadn’t reached the individual state meet, Kyser looked like the better wrestler for nearly two straight periods, building a 10-3 lead. Just as it looked like the only drama would be how many bonus team points Kyser would score, Cole stunningly flipped him onto his back and scored a pin, putting Yale ahead 22-0 and sending the navy side of the arena into hysterics.
“He was wrestling well,” Whitehall coach Justin Zeerip said of Kyser. “He’s had a great season for us all year and battled for the team every single time. Sometimes that happens in wrestling and you get caught.”
It was the sort of win that marked so many of the Vikings’ past triumphs, and just as Whitehall did in the years those wins went its way, Yale took full advantage of the boost in momentum.
Liam Leeke, Whitehall’s most imposing wrestler, easily romped to a technical fall in the next bout, but at 190, the Bulldogs picked up another massive win when Dominic Burns scored a last-minute three-point takedown to swing his bout against state qualifier Tanner Woodworth and win it 4-3. Even the Vikings’ win at 215 was a frustrating one; Easton Wisniewski controlled the entire bout, but Yale’s Noah Davis essentially curled into a ball and stalled for the entire third period, incurring a couple of stalling calls but doing his job, losing only 3-0 and preventing bonus points.
That was the last win Whitehall got. At 285, Shawn Coarse scored an early takedown for Yale against Billy Darke, then copied Davis’ stalling strategy the rest of the way and hung on for a 4-2 win. That flipped the match over to the lower weights, where Yale is loaded with regional championship caliber wrestlers, and the Bulldogs wrestled like it, racking up wins.
“Yale wrestled a great dual. They have a great team,” Zeerip said. “Overall, I don’t think we wrestled our best today. I’m not making any excuses; we just didn’t have our best.”
The 138-pound bout was the last of the dual and didn’t affect the final outcome, but featured a best-on-best battle between Max Krukowski and Chase Sopha, both regional champions. Krukowski came out on the short end, 1-0, in a battle that should sharpen him up to pursue a state title at 132 pounds at Ford Field this weekend.
Krukowski is one of 12 Vikings going to Detroit, so Whitehall’s season is far from over. And although Whitehall didn’t get to the state finals match like it had hoped, the season proved to be a very redemptive one after a quarterfinal defeat last year. Despite graduating two state champions and fielding a far less experienced roster, the team still met its stated annual goal of wrestling on the final day of the team season.
“It means a lot,” Zeerip said. “Last year, we lost in the quarters and I think it left a sour taste in our mouth. We didn’t want to have a repeat of last year…We have a lot to be proud of. We went 31-1 this year. We won a ton of duals and we beat some teams that are down here (at team state).”
In the near term and the long term, the future is bright. Six underclassmen and a junior are among the boys wrestlers competing at state, Zeerip said, and there are strong middle school classes on the way. In the meantime, a senior group that enjoyed a strong finish to their careers will go out having maintained the Vikings’ lofty standards.
“This group of seniors has been to team state four times and made the finals twice,” Zeerip said. “I really enjoyed working with that group. They were such great kids, and they’ll be super successful in life. It wasn’t our day today, but I’m still proud of our team in general.”
