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BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
Rochester junior Brant Beck holds a poster commemorating his 100th career win following his 21-6 technical fall victory over Warsaw’s Zander Moore Wednesday. Warsaw won the dual 51-27. Beck wrestled at 165 Wednesday but said afterwards that he will wrestle at 157 the rest of the season. He is ranked No. 1 in the state at 157, according to IndianaMat.com. Beck was a state qualifier at 160 in 2023 and finished third at state at 165 in 2024. Brady Beck, a 2024 Rochester grad and Brant’s brother, is the school record holder for wins with 164.
Junior stalwarts in their third year on the Rochester wrestling team, both Layne Horn (132) and Brant Beck (165) each earned their 100th career wins in a 51-27 loss to visiting Warsaw at the RHS gym Wednesday.
But while there was time to celebrate each of their accomplishments, there was also looking ahead to the future.
Beck revealed after the dual that he would be moving down from 165 to 157 for the Rochester John McKee Memorial Invitational Saturday and that he would stay at that weight class for the rest of the season.
Beck, who is 18-0 on the season after a 21-6 technical fall in 1:32 over Zander Moore, said he weighed 159 Wednesday. He finished third at state at 165 last year.
IndianaMat.com ranked Beck No. 4 at 165 this season, but when made aware that he would be moving down, IndianaMat put him at No. 1 at 157 in its new rankings that came out later Wednesday night.
“I’m going down to 157,” Beck said. “100 percent. I’ll be wrestling at 157 at the McKee. … It's been a cut, but I can get there.”
Beck said he had been told he was getting near 100 wins.
“I looked at it before the Elkhart tournament (the Jim Nicholson Invitational) Saturday, and I knew I was pretty close, so I would figure this would be the dual I did that,” Beck said.
Beck said increasing the value of a takedown from two points to three has affected his strategy. Now he tries to get tech falls in the first period. Known for his energetic, swarming style, he credited breathing exercises for his success.
“We do yoga as a team,” Beck said. “It helps a lot. It makes us more flexible with our breathing technique, stuff like that.”
Horn, like Beck, is 18-0 on the season. He overwhelmed K.C. Smith in 42 seconds.
“Honestly, I feel a lot better,” Horn said when asked about the move from 126 last year to 132 this year. “I feel a lot stronger and faster than I did at 126.”
Horn also said that the increase in points for a takedown from two to three has affected his wrestling.
“Takedowns are everything this year,” Horn said. “You get three or four takedowns a match basically. A takedown to a turn, then basically you’re up seven points by that point.”
Rochester junior Layne Horn (132) defeated Warsaw’s K.C. Smith by fall in 42 seconds at the RHS gym Wednesday for his 100th career victory. A state qualifier at 106 in 2023 and 126 in 2024, he is 18-0 on the season. Warsaw won the dual 51-27. Horn is seen here with Rochester student Emma Murphy, who created the poster commemorating the 100th win that the two are holding.
Horn was coming off a 5-0 run at the Elkhart. He had four first-period falls before Penn’s Ryann Schmidtendorff went the distance before losing a 7-0 decision.
All five of Beck’s wins at Elkhart were by tech fall, and none of those matches reached the third period.
“You’ll find that with every successful wrestler,” Rochester coach Tristan Wilson said. “They go out there aggressive, and they’re ready to battle. They both are. They know what they want to go to. They know what their number one takedown is, and they know what they’re going to do when they get on top.
The difference between them is Layne likes pinning, and Brant likes teching. So Brant loves to be a showman and score a lot of points in a lot of different ways. Layne like to just prove he’s better than someone and just pins them. Those are equally great. Love them.”
Rochester’s other points came from Derek Wortley, who controlled Liam Smith 14-2 at 175 for a major decision; Wyatt Davis, who pinned Noah Wilkins at 190; and Mason Hisey, who was up 7-0 when he stuck Beckham Boylan in the second period at 215.
The most competitive match came at heavyweight, where Warsaw’s Kameron Kauffman rallied from an 8-1 deficit to beat Declan Gard 10-9. Kauffman was awarded a stalling penalty point in the third period as part of his comeback.
Kauffman was a semistate qualifier at 215 last year while Gard was a semistate qualifier at 175 last year. Both are ranked in the top 20 this year.
“I think there’s a lot of things that go into play there,” Wilson said. “I don’t think he’s wrestling the best he’s ever wrestled. That’s one. I don’t think he’s practicing the best that he could practice. That’s two. And then the third one, it’s a weird feeling, but when you’re wrestling a big match, and you know it’s a big match, and you go out there and you go 100 percent right out of the gate, the adrenaline that you had that was doing all of that dumps. And it feels like you can’t breathe. I haven’t seen Declan wrestle like that in the third period since middle school. I’m not saying that’s the reason, but I’m saying that it may have some effect into it. But the way that he can fix that is just be in better condition. He is embarrassed that he just laid on the mat for an entire period, and I promise that will never happen again.”
Girls
While the boys were wrestling Warsaw, the Rochester girls were involved in a three-way dual with Warsaw and John Glenn on the other mat in the gym.
Rochester went 1-1, losing to Warsaw 42-18 before beating John Glenn.
Lexi Haughs (145) won by fall against John Glenn in a match that she had been trailing.
“Lexi was a really nice performance,” Wilson said. “Elise wrestled well. I think that overall, none of the battles that they have is wrestling-wise. I think it’s all attitude. This is a very tough sport, and it’s very weird, and it brings weird things out of you because you’re the only one doing things. I think they’re all just still trying to deal with some of that. There’s a lot of pressure when you walk out in front of everyone. It’s a lot of pressure when it’s a home meet. And I never feel like our girls wrestle their best at home meets.”
Laine Peppler, ranked No. 4 at 170, missed the matches due to health reasons.
The Lady Zs were coming off a fourth-place finish at the Lebanon Invitational on Saturday.
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