DeKALB — Joliet Catholic headed into the final round of the Don Flavin Invitational wanting to prove it was not just the best 2A team in the state, but the best of any class.

Things didn’t go as planned as the Hilltoppers took fourth place in the tournament, finishing 1-2 on the final day Friday against three of the top 3A teams in the state.

“I look at it like, this is what, the last week of December?” said heavyweight Dillan Johnson, who continued his dominant career with three more pins. “What we really want to do is win another state title. We have The Clash [another dual tournament next week in Wisconsin] coming up and some duals against some good 3A teams. Even though we didn’t end up like we wanted to, we still have that opportunity down the line.”

Marmion won the tournament, going 3-0 in the Champions’ Pool. JCA, Prospect and Marist all finished 1-2 on the day, with the Hilltoppers fourth on the tiebreaker.

After a big victory to win their bracket Thursday against St. Charles East - which went on to dominate the gold pool and take fifth - the Hilltoppers opened with a 32-29 win against Marist. But they lost their last two matches, 34-29 to Prospect and 41-20 to the eventual champs.

“I want to be considered among the best in the state regardless of class,” JCA coach Ryan Cumbee said. “Today showed me we still have a lot more to go before we consider ourselves the best in the state. It’s going to keep my guys hungry and we’re going to get better.”

After the big win against St. Charles East, Cumbee said there might have been a little bit of a letdown on the last day. But he added that disappointment usually leads to harder work, and he said he expects the team keep improving heading into the new calendar year.

“Yesterday was such a huge accomplishment and great day for a program, I think we had a little bit of a letdown today. And that’s really not on the kids, that’s on us as a coaching staff,” Cumbee said. “But at the same time we were battling with some of the best kids in the country, not just the state. So I’m very proud we can do that as a small 2A school. At the end of the day we got better. We didn’t win but we got better.”

Johnson was one of four wrestlers to have six pins in the tournament.

“We came in here feeling pretty good, we beat St. Charles [East],” Johnson said. “We came in here first dual, we pulled it off but shaky. Second dual we got caught, and third dual, we just got caught again. We just got beat.”

One of those other wrestlers with six pins in the two-day event was Lockport’s Brayden Thompson. Lockport ended up third in the Gold Pool, made up of the four second-place teams from Thursday’s bracket play.

The Porters opened the day with a 38-26 win against Yorkville but fell to St. Charles East, 45-27, and DeKalb, 38-24 to take seventh overall.

“I think we lost a lot of matches we could have won,” coach Jameson Oster said. “That’s always disappointing when that happens. Luckily it’s early in the season and we have time to make some adjustments before the postseason. End of the day, 1-2 is not what we’re looking for coming into it.”

Oster said Thompson and Malik Salah do what they usually do, wracking up the wins for the Porters. Salah picked up a pair of wins on Friday. He also said Logan Kaminsky’s 6-5 win over DeKalb’s Austin Martin was a big win for him.