Liam Schroeder lost twice at the Class 2A State Tournament, the kind of collapse that can sink any wrestler on the biggest stage of the year, let alone a freshman.

Coaches even have a name for it, calling it the semifinal slide.

But the Sycamore 113-pounder regrouped, won his last match to take fifth, and finished 46-3 to set up high expectations for the rest of his high school career.

He’s the Daily Chronicle 2026 Boys Wrestler of the Year.

“After you have a season in which you don’t really lose then you lose at state, things can really spin out of control,” Schroeder said. “After the consolations semis I had to take a deep breath and let it lie all on the mat. Sometimes you have to know when to let it go. That’s what I did in the last match.”

Sycamore coach Randy Culton said he was worried about Schroeder falling into the semifinal slide. A wrestler loses in a semifinal match in a high-stakes, double-elimination tournament, and suddenly, instead of wrestling for the title, they are losing in the consolation match, losing the fifth-place match and going home in sixth place.

Schroeder lost one match all season entering the tournament. Then he lost his semifinal match 11-2 to eventual state champ Vince DeMarco of Grayslake Central, and consolation semifinal to eventual third-place finisher Hogan Rice of Marian, 10-0.

Obviously, Schroeder was able to avoid the slide completely by picking up the win in the fifth-place match.

“We saw his abilities to handle the pressures of the state tournament,” Culton said. “We didn’t realize he’d get as far as medalling. You usually don’t want to look at that as a freshman. The last freshman who medaled was Kyle Aiken, and that was 2013.”

Culton said he saw potential in Schroeder as early as last summer, when he took fifth at a statewide tournament in Bloomington. That gave him a sense of how Schroeder could handle pressure.

Still, there’s a difference between the pressure of an offseason tournament and the state championships.

“It’s really tough to get motivated because you’ve exhausted your whole mental psyche,” Culton said. “You had your heart set on making the state finals. All of that incorporated with the mental and physical parts of it is huge. He handled it well. He lost a couple of matches but regained his focus.”

After seeing the bounce back from the two losses at the state tournament, Culton believes Schroeder has the potential to be a three-time state champion.

Schroeder said he entered the state tournament with the goal of winning it. But he got in his own head and started overthinking things, something he corrected after his two losses.

“You have to treat every match at state like any other match during the season,” Schroeder said. “Specifically during the consolation semifinal match for me, it wasn’t really like that. I was scaling the match too big because of the scale of state. It was really important I learned that lesson and treat the postseason like the regular season.”

Schroeder won both the Class 2A Morris Regional and Geneseo Sectional, plus won the Sycamore Invitational and Russ Erb Classic. He went 6-0 at The Flavin at DeKalb.

“Coming into the year I didn’t really know what to expect,” Schroeder said. “I just went out there and wrestled my hardest. I’m very happy and very thankful for the way it all turned out.”