NEWARK, Del: Central Dauphin's Garrett Peppelman spent a little time talking about his 160-pound Beast of the East championship.
But that wasn't all that was on his mind.
He couldn't help directing praise towards his teammate, 152-pounder Austin Rose, and the effort he put in during the tournament weekend to come up with a third-place finish.
"I'm happy for Austin," Peppelman said. "He worked so hard in the off-season and in the room. He deserves this."
Rose dropped a respectable 4-0 decision to Blair's Russell Parsons -- the eventual champion at the weight -- in Friday's third round. But that only served as motivation.
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The Rams senior spent Friday night and most of Saturday carving his way through a difficult consolation bracket to earn a medal.
In the consolation semifinals, he dispatched nationally ranked Wayne Stinson (Northern Burlington) to earn a spot in the third-place match opposite defending 145-pound state champ Garett Hammond.
There, Rose took the match to sudden death, where he managed a takedown seconds before the buzzer for a 6-4 decision.
"I knew I could take him down," Rose said. "After the first one, it gave me confidence.
"At the end, I had a whizzer and just tried not to get taken down. I was just able to hip him over."
Rose will be a handful this season. And now that he has a win over a defending state champ, he is in line for a high seed during postseason tournaments.
"This is big," Rose said. "I feel like now that I beat a kid that won states, I shouldn't be beaten the rest of the season."