With Kale Petersen and McKinley Robbins both winning wrestling State Championships last Saturday night, the Jefferson-based wrestling program continues a streak that began with Dave Hagedorn in 1979. He was the first wrestler to win a State title for the Rams and Hagedorn went undefeated for Jefferson High School that season. Since then, Erik Strawn in 1982 for Jefferson, Will Thomsen for Jefferson-Scranton/Paton-Churdan in 1994, Robbins in 2021 and ’23 for Greene County, and Petersen in 2022 and ’23 for Greene County all collected State wrestling titles, and all were undefeated in their championship seasons!

That’s seven individual titles from five wrestlers over 44 years and seven undefeated seasons. Four of the titles happened in the last three seasons with 2022-23 marking the first time in program history more than one Ram wrestler won State in the same season. Petersen did lose a match during the 2020-21 season, when he won the first of his three titles, but that was when he was enrolled at West Fork (Sheffield) as a sophomore. Both Petersen and Robbins have wrestled for Sebolt Wrestling Academy, now located in Jefferson, since they were in elementary school.