UW-Whitewater wrestlers Brayden Peet and Dominik Mallinder earned All-American honors at the 2025 NCAA Division III National Championships, Saturday, March 15 at the Amica Mutual Pavilion in Providence, Rhode Island.
Peet earned a fourth place finish in the 165-pound weight class, in his first NCAA nationals appearance. He started the tournament strong on Friday with an 8-2 decision win against Ithaca College wrestler Konrad Parker.
In the second round, Peet won with a decision of 8-1 over Washington and Lee University wrestler Mark Troni and advanced to his third match of the day where he championed a third round matchup over Christophe Stathopoulos of Stevens.
“It was definitely a long two days,” Peet said. “I feel like I wrestled well, especially the first day. Those three matches were probably some of the best matches I wrestled all year.”
Saturday, Peet began with a loss by a 5-0 decision to Augsburg wrestler Cooper Willis, but earned a spot in the consolation final for third place with a 6-0 decision win over Jake Deguire of Springfield.
In the third place match, Peet was bested by fellow WIAC wrestler for UW-La Crosse Tanner Gerber by a major decision of 15-6.
Overall, Peet was satisfied with his performance, but is determined to improve on this season’s showing in 2026.
“Obviously the main goal was to be an All-American, and it felt good to do that,” he said. “But I know that I could have done better to accomplish my other goal of being a national champ. I’ll have to put in work next year, but overall I felt like I did really well with my goals this year.”
Warhawk wrestling head coach Matt Zwaschka shared similar high hopes for Peet next season.
“Brayden being a sophomore, it was his first time at the national tournament; that’s not an easy thing to go to the national tournament one time and become an All-American,” he said. “He wrestled very well … taking fourth place is a good accomplishment for him this year and gives him a place to build up and try to become a national champ.”
In addition to Peet, Mallinder improved on his sixth place All-American finish in 2o24 with a fifth place All-American finish in the 133-pound weight class.
Similar to Peet, Mallinder went 3-0 in his Friday matches setting him up for a national semi-final matchup against Coast Guard wrestler Chase Randall on Saturday. Randall bested Mallinder, which sent him to the consolation bracket where he lost by a slim 3-2 decision at the hands of Baldwin Wallace wrestler Jaden Hinton. To finish the day and season, Mallinder secured his fifth place finish with a pin of Garret Totten from The College of New Jersey in just 1 minute 54 seconds.
Zwaschka was pleased with the performances of Peet and Mallinder to wrap up another season for the Warhawks, but not surprised.
“I think that’s the expectation in the room for those guys,” he said. “We had a lot of guys that had those expectations and that is kind of the expectation we put on our athletes. If you can be in our starting lineup, you can be at the national tournament and you can be an All-American.”
