The Lake Mills wrestling team took second place Saturday at the North Iowa Conference wrestling tournament at Garner, according to a press release.

Three Bulldogs reached the finals in their weight classes. Sophomore Slade Sifuentes won his first conference title by defeating Joe Malecek of Osage, 6-1. Senior Andrew Olsen captured his second NIC title with second-period pin over Connor Smith of Garner-Hayfield-Ventura.

“It was nice to have a couple NIC champs in the final year of the conference,” said Lake Mills coach Alex Brandenburg. “This conference has an amazing tradition in wrestling, and it nice these two are part of the list of some great champs.”

The Bulldogs finished behind perennial conference front-runner Osage, a team that won the tournament 33 of the last 43 years. Lake Mills used a balanced attack as eight of its 13 wrestlers placed in the top three to accumulate 184 team points.

“We wrestled very well in the first round but had a terrible semifinal round, ending any chance of beating Osage,” Brandenburg said. “The kids did a great job bouncing back in the consolation semifinals to create a large gap between us and rest of the teams behind us.”