On preps: KMS wrestlers find football to be a pleasant diversion

Sports history isn't exactly filled with stories of football players sneaking away for impromptu wrestling practice.

But that's how it goes at Kerkhoven-Murdock-Sunburg, a school combining three communities located a little more than 100 miles west of the Twin Cities. The football team won the Class 1A championship at the Prep Bowl in November. A lot of the key players on that team, though, consider themselves wrestlers first and football players second.

"We'd say, 'Don't tell Coach [James Cortez],' " said Kevin Steinhaus, a quarterback in football and a 160-pounder on the wrestling mat. "We were having wrestling practice, and he might not have liked it."

It's hard to blame the kids for wanting to stay sharp. The Prep Bowl was on a Friday; the following Monday, they were in the wrestling room. And they haven't slowed down since.

Steinhaus, a senior who will wrestle for the Gophers, started a run of three consecutive individual Class 1A wrestling champions from KMS when he won his third state championship Saturday via a 14-3 major decision. Senior Mitch Hagen, a fullback/linebacker/171-pounder, was next with a 7-2 victory. And finally, junior Joel Bauman -- who ran for 289 yards in the Prep Bowl and wrestles at 189 -- came through with a 5-3 victory in his match.

All three -- Bauman lost twice all year and the other two were undefeated -- produced another murderer's row Saturday night in the team competition. No. 1 KMS, wrestling in the state meet as a team for the first time, came back from a 19-0 deficit to defeat No. 2 Kenyon-Wanamingo 32-25 and claim the team championship.

It was 19-14 when the Big Three got their chance. Steinhaus and Bauman recorded pins, while Hagen won a clutch decision in overtime. KMS never trailed again.

What's the secret to the school's run of sports success? Like many small public schools, it's largely dependent on a special group of athletes coming along at the same time. The juniors and seniors at KMS have been waiting for this year for about a decade.

"Back in grade school, we used to say, 'Wait until we're seniors. We're going to be good then,' " Steinhaus said.

As for the two-sport success, it's clear that wrestling strength is the focus; football, for the most part, is a happy by-product.

"We practice football," Hagen said. "But we go to wrestling camps, not football camps, in the summer."

Bauman, who was adopted when he was three months old and has lived in the community ever since, is drawing national attention as both a wrestler and a football player. He will make an unofficial visit to UCLA later this month, and another to Nebraska in April.

Those trips are for football, which could be sacrilege among his teammates at little KMS if it wasn't so cool.

"I know, right?" said a beaming Bauman, who ran for nearly 3,000 yards in the fall. "I love it."

On Saturday night, with three wrestlers having claimed individual titles and the team claiming a championship for the entire community to savor, there was plenty of love to go around at KMS.

"This makes my high school career," said Bauman, even though he has a year to go. "I couldn't ask for anything more."

Michael Rand • mrand@startribune.com