Staff photo by Ari Selvey Lake Crystal Wellcome Memorial’s Nick Slater was named the 2024-45 All-Journal Wrestler of the Year on Thursday.

NICOLLET — Last season, Lake Crystal Wellcome Memorial Area’s Nick Slater finished runner-up at 189 pounds in the Class A State Individual Wrestling Tournament, coming up just short of a state title.

His season was still deemed excellent enough to be named the All-Journal Co-Wrestler of the Year, but as Slater returned to the state tournament this season at 189, he knew there was some unfinished business.

“I knew that I could beat them,” Slater said. “I knew I could beat everyone in that bracket, and I knew I could be on top of that podium. I just had that whole mindset that whole week, Wednesday to Saturday, from when we got up to the cities to the ride back. I got the three seed, which, I mean it doesn’t matter to me because I knew I could beat them all, but it kind of put an edge on myself to prove them wrong. I had it in my mind that I could win it.”

Nick Slater, now a senior at Nicollet High School, won four straight matches in the tourney, including the championship match against Holdingford’s Jaxon Bartcowitcz by a 7-0 decision, to earn his first state title.

Slater also helped LCWMA to a third-place finish at this year’s Class A Team State Tournament after the team took fifth last season.

“Last year we lost first round, so then we already knew the best we could get is fifth place,” Slater said. “We went and did that, we got fifth place last year. But coming into this year, we knew we had way higher goals. To place top three was our goal as a team. We knew it was very doable, we just had to wrestle hard and do it.”

LCWMA went on to defeat Canby in the first round, and while they fell to Chatfield in the second round, the team was able to defeat their rivals in Jackson County Central in the third-place game.

“We had lost to Jackson earlier in the year by a couple,” Slater said. “It was close. Then we went out there knowing we could beat them, and we got third. It’s always our goal to beat Jackson, it’s a little rival that we have. We really want to beat them.”

For his accomplishments at state, as well as his 47-4 record with 18 pins, has earned Slater his second All-Journal Wrestler of the Year honor as selected by The Journal’s sports staff.

“It’s pretty sweet to win it,” Slater said. “Just winning the state title is probably the best part, honestly, but getting third with the team was pretty great too. They were both pretty fun. But also winning all these awards is pretty cool, too, because they never go away. You always remember all of them.”

Slater is an All-Conference wrestler and was selected to the State All-Tournament Team as well this season.

Slater said that his senior season was a fun one filled with great memories.

“Competing is pretty fun,” he said. “This year we traveled a long ways to go get the best competition to make us better. We went to a tournament in Wisconsin that [I] have never wrestled in before. Lake Crystal has before, but none of us have before. We wrestled teams all across the country. It was all fun.”

Slater finishes his prep wrestling career with the third-most wins all time for LCWMA at 187 wins to only 53 losses, placing himself firmly among the greatest wrestlers in the program.

“It’s pretty sweet to do that,” Slater said. “We have all the wins on a wall, and I have more wins than all of my coaches. So it’s pretty sweet to look at that. But you go look at the top three, and its two other guys and me … Those two are both really good wrestlers, so it’s pretty sweet to go and always have that.”

Slater also has 110 pins in his career, over half of his win total. Slater said that getting the pin is a mindset he always goes into a match with.

“Some kids go out there and are like, ‘We’ll go tech fall, we’ll just go beat them.’ But we wrestle a lot as a team, and the team needs pins to get more team points. I just got to go out there, and I’m in the upper weights too, and it really helps when you get a pin up there. You’ve just got to go get on and off the mat.”

Slater plans on entering the workforce after high school, and therefore may have wrestled his last match. Slater said to end that match as a state champion was a great accomplishment.

“Like my boss told me one time, ‘You have no regrets now that you’ve done it,'” Slater said. “It feels great. He’s right, there’s no regrets now that you did it.”