Isaiah Tipping ties up with Christopher Roth in the 220-pound match in Thursday’s dual with CMA. (Photos by James Costello)

SYRACUSE — Don’t misunderstand Wawasee wrestling coach Frank Bumgardner — a loss is never a good thing. But after a 10-0 start, the Warriors’ first defeat of the year at the hands of visiting Culver Military Academy Thursday night isn’t the worst possible thing, either.

It’s simply a reminder that there’s still work to do.

“How did we perform? Overall, I thought our hustle was pretty good. Our effort was good. Technically, we’ve got to get a lot better, though,” said Bumgardner of his team’s narrow, 42-36 loss at the Hardwood Teepee. “It’s good to have this now to kind of open up our eyes a little bit and kind of renew that vigor.”

After back-to-back 5-0 finishes at both the Warsaw Invitational and Wawasee’s own November Duals the past two weekends, the Warriors looked to be well on their way to another win in Thursday’s match with sectional-rival CMA, at one point leading by as much as 30-9. But the Eagles claimed wins in five of the last six matches, including four by pinfall, to rally past their hosts.

Freshman Dylan Tom gave the home team an early lead with a late second-period pinfall of Samuel Suppes in the evening’s first match at 113 pounds. Minus two of the Warriors top wrestlers in Jace Alexander and Garrett Stuckman — a 5-0 and 4-1 finisher at last weekend’s home invite, respectively — seniors Geremia Brooks and Braxton Alexander both wrestled up a class, and both delivered pinfall victories to push Wawasee out to a 24-9 advantage against CMA.

Geremia Brooks pins CMA’s Gabriel Henderson at 138 pounds.

Brooks showed some slick work on his feet on the way to a 9-2 lead at the end of the first period, then finished Culver junior Gabe Henderson with just one second to go in the second period in the 138-pound match. Braxton followed suit at 145, mauling Sam Durkin with an early takedown, cutting him loose, then quickly putting him down and on his back for a 1:06 pinfall.

“We had to do some bumping down there with the heart of our lineup just because we knew it was going to be a tight team score. We knew that we didn’t have (Jace and Stuckman) available, so we were trying to take advantage of the opportunity that we had,” explained Bumgardner. “Both of those guys made weight on a short week and then they went ahead and they sucked it up and they bumped up. Exciting style. When they’re on, they’re really, really good, and they looked really good tonight.”

A CMA forfeit at 152 pushed Wawasee out to a 30-9 cushion, but that’s where things began to unravel for the Warriors.

Briley Welsch and Eli Pack collected back-to-back pinfall wins for the Eagles at 160 and 172, and Andrew Donahue — ranked fifth in the state by Indianamat.com as a mere freshman — earned a 6-1 decision over Alex Castro at 182. It was a disappointing loss for Castro, but the Wawasee senior was able to keep his team in the hunt fighting off a possible pin in the last minute of the match, and the Warriors still clung to a 30-24 lead after the loss.

“He was looking to help the team in any way possible, to keep it to a minor decision, but I think more than anything that’s his personal pride,” said Bumgardner of Castro’s loss. “He wants to score every point. Yeah, that was a tight half that that kid had him in, and he just kept fighting and he found a way out. He’s going to get better; we have no doubt about that.”

Jacob Trefren gave the visitors another pinfall win at 195 to knot the score up at 30-all, but Isaiah Tipping parlayed an early tie-up and takedown of Christopher Roth into a 36-second pinfall win at 220 to put his team back out front at 36-30.

“He’s getting a lot better each and every day. First year in the lineup. He was very unrattled when he went out there and just put on a good show,” Bumgardner said of Tipping.

Braxton Alexander has his hands raised after his 145-pound win over Sam Durkin.

That win proved to be the Warriors’ last, however, as Joe Kuhl won the heavyweight bout in under a minute, and Brenden Cernus claimed an almost-as-fast pinfall win at 106 as Culver Military celebrated the come-from-behind win over its Plymouth Sectional rival on Military Appreciation Night in Syracuse.

The Warriors slip to 10-1 with the loss and will look to rebound in their Northern Lakes Conference-opener at NorthWood next Tuesday. There’s still work to be done, but the good news is there’s still plenty of time to get it done. Bumgardner says he’ll know a lot more about his team when he sees how they respond in the practice room Friday.

“We’ve had some tough duals, tough competition, but we’ve been able to take care of business. Riding high, you start to lose focus, and the urgency is not always there every minute of every practice. So just to have that reminder that there are gains that need to be made, and this is a sectional team and if we want to repeat as sectional champs we have some work to do,” he said.

“It’s not ever a good time for a loss; it’s not ever a good feeling. But the big question is how are we going to respond tomorrow, and I’ll be able to tell you Saturday morning what the outlook for the rest of our year is going to look like.”

Also Thursday, Wawasee tied CMA 6-6 in the JV bouts.