By Rich Winter

605 Sports

The final girls wrestling poll of 2022 saw Pierre, Canton, Spearfish, Harrisburg and Viborg-Hurley ranked as the top five teams in South Dakota. 

With girls wrestling in its second year as a sanctioned sport one might expect success at schools with larger enrollments. One might also wonder how in the world is the tiny co-op of Viborg-Hurley hanging with these big schools? 

“We’re really surprised to be competitive against schools that are so much bigger than us,” Viborg-Hurley coach Camron Groenke said. 

A year ago the Cougars had six girls go out for wrestling. This season that number swelled to 13 athletes. 

“We didn’t expect to have these numbers,” Groenke said. “If you get one girl out sometimes you get their friends to come out and it sorta snowballed on us.” 

At the 2021 state tournament Viborg-Hurley had two medal winners (Gia Miller, 2nd at 185) and (Emma Murray, 3rd at 185). Murray’s 2022 season ended with a knee injury while Miller is currently ranked No. 2 (170). 

“Gia is currently 14-5 but four of those losses have come to defending state champion Carlee Laubach of Canton,” Groenke said. “When she is wrestling with confidence she’s hard to beat.” 

Sophomore Gia Miller is ranked No. 2 (170)

With Murray out her backup, junior Lauren Peterson is having a great season in her first ever year of wrestling. 

“She’s currently 15-11 and ranked No. 4 (190),” Groenke said. “It is remarkable to have that kind of success as a first year athlete and we are happy with her progress.” 

Groenke said first-year wrestler Aubrey Jensen (113), who finished 4th at the recent Harrisburg tournament, is strong as an ox and coming on late in the season. 

Returner Morgan Lee (120) missed half of the year with a broken wrist but is still ranked No. 7 in the state. 

Returner Hope Orr (285) is currently 14-8 on the season and ranked No. 3 in her weight class. 

Hope Orr is ranked No. 2 at (285)

While Viborg-Hurley is commonly thought of as a basketball school something special is brewing in the Cougar wrestling room. 

“It has been cool to see so much excitement in our girls program,” Groenke said. “All of the girls have bought in, they push each other and they think of one another as family.” 

One of the challenges the Viborg-Hurley girls do face is finding matches. The boys and girls teams travel together, mostly to Class B tournaments. Many of those tournaments do have girls brackets but those brackets are rarely full and often weight classes are consolidated just to have matches. 

“We went through half of December where our big girls didn’t have any matches,” Groenke said. 

With no region tournaments for girls Groenke will submit rosters, records and seeding criteria onto Trackwrestling by Thursday. Then it is a waiting game as state tournament brackets will be announced for both boys and girls Saturday evening at the conclusion of boys region tournaments. 

“The top-16 girls get into state and for us we have a pretty good feeling we will qualify five athletes,” Groenke said. 

With success in each of their first two seasons the Cougars are poised for a move in 2023 as they return every athlete on this year’s roster. 

“This is a basketball school and it has been fun to carve out our little niche,” Groenke said. “We have more girls in the youth program and we can’t wait to see where this goes.”