Lincoln-Way East edges Lockport on tiebreaker, wins SWSC Blue crown

Alex Knaperek knew what was at stake when he took the mat for his heavyweight bout.

The Lincoln-Way East senior delivered.

Knaperek outlasted Cody Silzer for a 5-3 win in the final match of the evening. That allowed Lincoln-Way East to claim a 33-33 tie with host Lockport Thursday evening. But the Griffins won the match on criteria as they captured eight of the 14 individual bouts.

That gave Lincoln-Way East the team title in the Blue Division of the SouthWest Suburban Conference. The Griffins are the first team outside of Lockport or Sandburg to win the SWSC Blue in its 17-year history.

“It was tough but we had the momentum,” Knaperek said of winning his heavyweight match. “I was so pumped up. The coaches told me going in what was at stake and I knew I had to come through for the team.”

Knaperek had never wrestled Silzer. But they faced each other on the football field.

“I knew he was tough,” said Knaperek, who had leads of 3-0 and 5-1 in the bout before hanging on. “It’s an honor to win this (conference). Last year (in the spring) we weren’t that great. But this year I knew I had to be a leader. We’re 19-0 and that’s never been done at East before.”

Indeed the Griffins are now 19-0 and finish 5-0 in the league. Lockport (16-5, 4-1) was hoping to win its first conference championship since 2020 but it wasn’t to be.

“That’s just stepping up big in big moments, “Lincoln-Way East coach Kevin Rockett said of his team. We didn’t stop, we wrestled all six minutes. We always condition to be ready in the third period.”

That showed with a pair of wins in the final seconds, both by freshmen. Tyson Zvonar had a takedown with 20 seconds left to break a tie and pull out a 7-5 win at 120 pounds. Alex Lizak did even better as he got a takedown with just three seconds left in the match to take a 4-3 win at 138.

“At the end, I just shot and was able to take him down,” Lizak said of his win over Logan Kaminski. “It was crazy. I was thinking, ‘he’s ranked. But if I put in my work I can do it.’

“It’s huge. At the beginning of the season, we beat Lincoln-Way West for the first time ever. So we knew there could be big things for this team.”

Also getting wins for the Griffins were Noah Ciolkosz with a pin in 37 seconds at 106, Connor Koehler with a pin in 2:34 at 126, Dominic Adamo had a 5-1 victory at 160, Ari Zaeske won 8-4 at 170, and Connor Lindauer had a pin in 1:23 at 195 pounds.

The Porters had five pins. They were by David Vukobratovich in 1:14 at 113. Carlos Munoz-Flores in 1:52 at 132, Keegan Roberson in 3:09 at 145, Brayden Thompson in 3:08 at 182, and Drew Blackburn-Forst in 45 seconds at 220 pounds. Logan Swaw also had a 3-0 decision at 152 pounds.

Lockport lost to Sandburg 34-33 on May 13 last spring in what amounted to the conference title bout. So it was the second straight disappointment in the SWSC Blue for the Porters.

“I knew it was going to be tough in general and came out and wrestled hard and they wrestled well,” Lockport coach Josh Oster said of the Griffins. “We gave up a couple of key points at the end of our matches. If we are going to be the team that we want to be, we have to win those.”

Rockett was a 4-year head coach at Lincoln-Way North before it closed. He’s now in his fourth season as the head coach at Lincoln-Way East and is proud his team made history.

“I’ve been doing this 15 years in this conference and that’s startling,” Rockett said when told the Griffins were the first team outside of the Porters or Sandburg to win the SWSC Blue. “But that’s what we want to do, make our mark in this conference.”