Barely a month removed from standing on the podium inside Ball Arena in Denver, Hunter Mars revealed Thursday evening that his wrestling odyssey will be continuing in a region very much alien – even its nickname, Minn-Dak, sounds like a “Star Trek” villain – to the Bayfield community.
And that seems to suit the BHS senior just fine. Mars will be wrestling at Division III Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota.
“I think it’s cool being able to grow up in Bayfield and wrestle here since I was in third grade,” Mars said. “Now I look back and I’m like, ‘Man, I’ve been wrestling a while!’ I felt like I started late, but didn’t start late at all. I was kind of sick of Colorado and wanted to get away. But we’ll see.”
Part of the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, Concordia began this month placing fourth at the 16-team Upper Midwest Regional, held at Augsburg University in Minneapolis and qualifying two individuals for the 2025 NCAA Div. III Championships – which commenced just hours after Mars’ announcement – on Friday and Saturday at Amica Mutual Pavilion in Providence, Rhode Island
“So I went up for a visit in November, and they pretty much just sold me on the amount of mat time I was going to get,” said Mars, fourth place at 113 pounds at the ’25 CHSAA Class 3A State Championships. “I knew I was going to be able to wrestle more there, than maybe at other colleges, earlier on.”
Mars said he’s been communicating with CC head coach Quincy Osborn and the Cobbers’ staff. He’ll move up to 125 pounds but Mars isn’t too worried about it since he’s already filled out.
Where he’ll be, in a more literal sense, is in an area filled with opportunity – whether in Moorhead, or westward across the Red River of the North in Fargo, North Dakota.
“The academics are really good at (Concordia), so I’m looking forward to that,” said Mars (73-58 overall), a two-time State qualifier interested in business studies. “And then wrestling …. Minnesota State-Moorhead is overlapping campus, and North Dakota State’s right there as well – there’s a D-II school and a D-I school right there, so that’s pretty cool.”
