The Mid-Prairie wrestling team qualified two wrestling brothers for the state tournament in Des Moines during Saturday’s district meet at Solon. The Golden Hawks started the day with three athletes in contention, Josh Murphy at 113, Phirom Peterschmidt at 182 and Nearoth Peterschmidt at 195. Murphy fell in his opening match to Luis Gnida by decision 8-1, Nearoth Peterschmidt handled his opening opponent, Connor Welch of Mt. Vernon, 6-0 to advance to the title match and Phirom Peterschmidt got to the championship round with the match of the day defeating Mitchell Jilovec of Mt. Vernon 5-3 in Sudden Victory. Peterschmidt led 2-0 late before surrendering an escape and takedown to fall behind 3-2, he then rallied with an escape to send the match to overtime and won with a take down in the extra frame.

In the championship matches both Peterschmidts were defeated but advanced to the state tournament due to the combination of the victories in consolation matches in their weight classes. After the district meet Head Coach Justin Garvey spoke about what their performance means to the program.

“This is big, I mean it has been a long time since someone has qualified, I think Aaron Kurtz is the last one to do it,” Garvey said. “So this is big for us, these guys have worked hard, and we had some great fan support with us today and hopefully we’ll make some noise in Des Moines.”

Phirom and Nearoth Peterschmidt will be in state tournament action starting on Thursday at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines.