Trio of Red Raiders girls move on to state

HUNTLEY — A trio of Huntley girls wrestlers reported to practice with a new focus and trips to the IHSA Girls State Individual Meet earned at the Class 3A Schaumburg Sectional Feb. 10.

The Red Raiders who qualified to advance to the Feb. 24-25 at Bloomington event are: second-place won by freshman Janiah Slaughter at 100 pounds; returning state qualifier Taylor Casey clinched second at 110 and Aubrie Rohrbacher, who was third at 125.

“I’ve been wrestling for four years,” Slaughter said. “I tried to talk to other girls about it but they thought it was ‘icky’. I just keep working, working and working.”

Slaughter, 23-4, advanced to the weight class final with three wins but fell to Emma Engels pf Bartlett, by pin in 4:52.

Slaughter also has a TD run for  football team this season. “But I’ll be 100 % wrestling,” she said.

“I wanted state very badly and was motivated,” Casey said. “I rely on my big support group and keep pushing myself.”

Casey won by three pins and one major decision to improve to 22-7 but fell to Nina Matthews of Addison Trail for first place by pin in 1:30. Rohrbacher improved to 28-5, and had to win five matches to advance with a third. She took the final battle, over Eunice Ji of Hoffman Estates, by pin in 3:26. Assistant coaches Kenneth Moore and John Walker guided the Red Raiders Saturday and were pleased with the results.

“We have a lot of young girls on the team and they’ve made a lot of progress,” Moore said. “We made a few mistakes today but we’ll work on them because state is a new season.”

Also at sectional, a highlight was a big comeback in the final seconds by Addison Drews at 115 pounds. A high-scoring move gave her a win by pin with 20 seconds to go in the fourth round. She lost the next match, though, for a final 25-15 mark.

“I used a ”batman roll” that coach just taught us in practice this week,” Drews said.

Gretchen Sweeney, 27-14, was 4-2 at sectional, at 170 pounds just missing going for third place.