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Edwardsville's Ryan Richie in action during the Class 3A Alton Regional in Alton.
Matt Kamp/The Intelligencer
The Edwardsville Tigers qualified two wrestlers for the IHSA Class 3A state tournament this weekend and both are through to the quarterfinals after Day 1.
Ryan Richie, at 113 pounds, and Drew Landau, at 145 pounds, each won their first-round matches on Thursday inside the State Farm Center on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
A regional champion at Alton and a third-place finisher at the Normal Community Sectional, the freshman Richie made his state tournament debut with a 5-4 win over Conant’s Luis Flores to improve to 30-8. Flores dropped to 20-13.
Richie will face Mount Carmel’s Seth Mendoza on Friday in the quarterfinals. Mendoza, who is 34-2, won his opening match 20-4 over Loyola Academy’s Gavin Pardilla.
In the 145-pound bracket, Landau opened with a 5-4 win over Palatine Fremd’s Jake Crandall. Landau is now 32-6 and Crandall is 30-13.
Landau’s quarterfinal opponent will be Marist’s Will Denny, who improved to 25-6 with a 16-4 win over Maine South’s Nate Beltran.
An Alton regional championship and second-place finisher at the Normal Community Sectional this season, the senior Landau finished sixth at 145 pounds in last year’s state tournament. With a top-six finish this year, Landau can become the fifth Edwardsville wrestler to earn two state medals at the IHSA state tournament and sixth overall – Dylan Gvillo finished second in the IWCOA state tournament in 2021 and sixth in the IHSA state tournament in 2022.
EHS has had at least two state medalists in the last six seasons. Last year, Gvillo and Landau join the tandems of Luke Odom and Noah Surtin (2017, 2018), Surtin and Lloyd Reynolds (2019), Odom and Reynolds (2020) and Drew Gvillo and Dylan Gvillo (2021).
The state quarterfinals and semifinals will be wrestled Saturday with the championship matches scheduled for Saturday night after the Grand March. The first and second rounds of wrestlebacks will be Friday with the quarterfinal and semifinal wrestlebacks and third- and fifth-place matches on Saturday.
