By Ken Chaisson
The Walpole Timberwolves wrestling team hosted a super quad meet on Saturday January 31, 2026 involving five other schools.
The visitors included the Barnstable Red Hawks, the Durfee Hilltoppers, the Holyoke Purple Knights, the Minnechaug Falcons and the Randolph Blue Devils.
Though the temperature at game time was a brisk -3 outdoors, there was plenty of sweat inside from the hard work in the fieldhouse.
The wrestling team has shown a marked improvement this year under the new coaching staff led by John McKeon in his inaugural year as Walpole’s head coach.
After a challenging 2024–25 season, McKeon and the team had set a goal of at least ten dual meet wins for the 2025–26 season. Their record coming into the super quad was 7–16. With a growing youth wrestling program in place, the sky’s the limit for Walpole grapplers.
The grapplers opened up the brand new fieldhouse with a quad on Saturday January 17, 2026. The team went 3–0 for the day beating Malden Catholic, Monty Tech and Nashoba Tech.
As a team, this group of Timberwolves are very competitive this year. The season has included close meets with Milton, Needham, Framingham and Braintree. The vanquishing of Brookline, 54–29, was the team’s first Bay State Conference victory since 2022.
In a dual meet, which is against one other school, each wrestler competes in one match. In a super quad meet, each wrestler wrestles in five different matches all in the span of a few hours. There are three mats going simultaneously. Unlike Walpole, some schools do not have wrestlers in every weight class.
Walpole and Holyoke kicked off the day at the center mat. Walpole eked out a hard fought victory, 39–37, which came down to the final heavyweight match.
The second set of matches for the Timberwolves was against Minnechaug. The Timberwolves won more convincingly, 51–23. Junior Rocco Lewis’ 13–11 victory went to the final second when a takedown was ruled after time had expired. Jeremiah Colon got 7 points in the last 10 seconds to seal his triumph.
Walpole bested Durfee in the third dual meet, 48–26. The home team was trailing 20–12 but came back in the heavier weights to secure a conquest. Cullen McCarthy fought back on points and then captured a late pin. That was followed by a Captain Jackson Doherty pin which put Walpole up 24–20, a lead they would not relinquish. With the victory, the team achieved their goal of at least ten victories on the season.
The hometown club then thumped Barnstable, 45–30.
The day was wrapped up against Randolph with another resounding triumph, 57–17.
Sophomore Lauren McAteer and senior Ryan Garrigan finished their days with unblemished 5–0 records. Senior captain Doherty, junior captain Isaac Mills, sophomore Sully Kittleson and freshman Conor McAteer all completed 4–1 competitions.
Celebrations were abundant in the perfect 5–0 day for the team. There was nothing negative about it, except the temperature.
