Ryan Bozer:
Mats, flexibility, and some spring in your step are all key for the two state championships happening this weekend. Welcome to a new segment we're calling Your Morning In Play. I'm Ryan Bozer, and with me is SDPB sports and recreation reporter, Nate Wek. How are you this morning, Nate?
Nate Wek:
I'm doing good, Ryan, how about you?
Ryan Bozer:
I'm doing all right. It's a good morning. Sort of exciting, we're going to try this new thing where we talk about the stuff that's coming up over the weekend, to highlight some of the achievements in athletics and other activities. This weekend we got team duels, wrestling championships and gymnastics championships coming up. Now, I am a good Iowa kid. I was part of a wrestling team back in the day, but I'm not familiar with this team duals term. I was used to everything being individual. So, can you explain that to us a little bit?
Nate Wek:
Yeah, so the team duals portion of it is you basically will have team A or since there's a class A and a class B, we'll just say there's team one and team two. There's already been eight teams for both class A and class B that have qualified. So, there'll be a total of 16 teams in action, each competing in their own class. So, it's basically just an 18 tournament for each of these, and it kind of is what it sounds. Each team will each pick a wrestler from a certain weight class and you'll run all the way through all of your weight classes. And whoever has the most points by the time it's done is the winner of that dual and the winner will advance and the losing team will go to the consolation bracket.
So, they'll play out, basically, a champion, third place. And then there's also going to be a fifth, sixth place match as well. So, a consolation champion type of thing. So, this is really the part of high school wrestling in South Dakota where you pin, no pun intended, two teams against each other and you just kind of dual it out to see which team can score the most points as you rotate through all the different weight classes.
Ryan Bozer:
Is that different than how state championships have run in the past?
Nate Wek:
Yeah.
Ryan Bozer:
Is this a new thing this year that we're seeing?
Nate Wek:
Team duals was a thing that a lot of people were familiar with 20 years ago. In 2004, that was the last year that they ran the team duals as part of the state championship event. And that then went away. Well, they brought it back in 2020 and they've been trying to figure out a perfect situation and a perfect spot to put it. And really, what they've kind of figured out is, with also the creation of a girls wrestling division a few years back, it's just made the traditional state wrestling weekend so much if you incorporate all of the new girls' weight classes as that sport continues to grow.
And it just became, "How are we going to fit all of this into a three-day event?" And the decision was made, let's put team duals as their own weekend two weeks before the traditional state wrestling weekend. So, that's what we're going to have this weekend, is just purely state team duals. And then in two weeks we'll all congregate back together and have ourselves the individual portion of the state wrestling tournament as well, which also does come with a team title. But the team duals title is a little bit of a different thing.
Ryan Bozer:
Okay. I mean, I'm just hearing we get to have wrestling spread out over more than one weekend, which I'm not opposed to, personally.
Nate Wek:
Right, exactly.
Ryan Bozer:
And then let's shift gears here. Let's talk gymnastics. State championships are this weekend. What's that looking like for all the teams competing?
Nate Wek:
Well, this is a big year for gymnastics. Title IX implemented in 1972. 1974 was the first year that we had sanctioned gymnastics in the state of South Dakota. So, this is the 50-year anniversary of sanctioned high school gymnastics in the state of South Dakota, which is a very big deal. And if you really want to back it up, Sioux Falls Washington did win that very first state team gymnastics title in 1974. And a quick little history lesson there too, Lolly Forseth was actually the head coach of that team. And she's a South Dakota Sports Hall of Famer. She was a Canton grad. She went to South Dakota State and she's actually also the first ever female athletic director in the state and she had that title at Lincoln High School.
Ryan Bozer:
Oh, wow. Yeah.
Nate Wek:
So, she's a very prominent name for people that really follow a lot of what things have looked like the last 50 years. She's a very sharp person. Yeah, so 1974, she was the first head coach to win a state gymnastics title. So this year, the way gymnastics looks like, the Friday is where the team competition happens for gymnastics. So, you're trying to get as many, the team points and the team scores and stuff like that working together as a team. So, that's the Friday for both Class AA and Class A. And then on Saturday it's the individual portion of the event. So, it looks very consistent to what it typically has looked like as far as gymnastics has on the way that it's looked under this two class format.
And then one thing that we do that's kind of fun at South Dakota Public Broadcasting, is we take all of the action that takes place with gymnastics for Friday and Saturday, we edit together a highlight show, and then we air the highlight show right after we get done in March with the Boys State Basketball Championships. So, on Sunday, March 17th, we'll actually air a highlight show of the state gymnastics championship. So, it's a way where there's four streams because four different events for gymnastics. So, there's just so much going on over the two days. So, we try to condense it down. We have announcers and stuff like that, that help it push the show along and stuff like that. And we put together this really fun highlight show as well, that we also repurpose all of this great gymnastics content in March.
Ryan Bozer:
Again, I'm just hearing we get to spread out the joy of gymnastics over more than one weekend, which sounds great. Two sports celebrations this weekend, both with team duals, gymnastic championships. Can you remind us how we have all the different ways we can watch it? There's so many different matches and meets going. What are some of the ways we can watch it online?
Nate Wek:
Yeah. The two easiest ways to do this is if you want to watch gymnastics, just go to sdpb.org/gymnastics. And if you want to watch the team duals with wrestling sdpb.org/wrestling. We'll have the streams for all of the events and all of the mats and all that type of stuff on those individual pages. So, we try to make it as simple as possible. Again, sdpb.org/gymnastics for full coverage of the state gymnastics championships, and then sdpb.org/wrestling for all of the complete coverage and award photos and event photos too for all these events too. So when you go to these web pages. But yeah, the wrestling one, sdpb.org/wrestling, and that's really the hub to go to if you want to see all of the information.
Ryan Bozer:
Awesome. Well, hey, I'm looking forward to getting to watch these kids compete, do the thing they're passionate about, and hopefully have a good time. So, thanks for joining me this morning, Nate. It's nice to have company in the office, first thing.
Nate Wek:
You bet.
Ryan Bozer:
And then I look forward to these being our weekly conversations going forward for a little bit.
Nate Wek:
All right. Well, hey, thanks Ryan. I really appreciate it.
