WILKES-BARRE – The Wilkes University wrestling team opened the 2023-24 season finishing in fourth place at the Ned McGinley Invitational crowing three champions while garnering eight top-6 finishers at the event hosted by King's College in the Scandlon Gymnasium.
 
As a team Wilkes totaled 120.5 points for fourth place out of 13 total teams. NYU took home first place with a team score of 134.5 while RIT (132) and Stevens Institute of Technology (122) rounded out the top three.
 
Three different Colonels took home first place as Jaryn Hartranft (Catasauqua, PA/Catasauqua) (157-pounds), Cameron Butka (Scranton, PA/West Scranton) (197-pounds) and Caleb Burkhart (Hughesville, PA/Hughesville) (285-pounds) all were crowned champions of their respective weight classes.

Full Results
 
At 157 Hartranft cruised to the semifinals with a pair of first period falls (1:08 and 1:40) and a technical fall (17-2). In his semifinal bout, he bested Ben Bariso of Roger Williams 8-4 before taking the title with a hard-fought 5-4 decision over Scranton's Daniel Kosinski.
 
After receiving a first round bye as the top seed at 197, Butka was impressive throughout the bracket scoring back-to-back technical falls (17-2 and 17-1) before a 14-10 decision over NYU's Jack Farinaro moved him into the title bout. From there Butka scored an 11-3 major decision victory over Stevens' Blaise Wagner to capture the crown.
 
Another top seed, Burkhart got back to his pinning ways of a year prior picking up a pair of falls to begin the tournament. He then closed out the title with a technical fall (15-0) in the semifinals before another technical fall (16-0) over Reid Garrison of US Merchant Marine Academy in the final bout.
 
Other top-6 finishers for Wilkes included a fifth place finish for Connor Kerwin (Totowa, NJ/Passaic Valley) at 125-pounds, sixth for Hunter Lowe (Westminster, MD/Winters Mill) at 197-pounds, sixth for Jack Bauer (Ringoes, NJ/Hunterdon Central) at 141-pounds, sixth for Michael Richardson (Brick, NJ/Brick Memorial) and sixth for Ryan Santiago (Bethlehem, PA/Liberty) at 149-pounds.
 
Wilkes returns to the mat Friday making its home debut hosting TCNJ at 7:00 p.m. at the Marts Center.