ST. PAUL — Blooming Prairie senior Jarrod Grunklee saw his career end one win short of a state championship when he lost the Class ‘A’ 285 pound title match 3-1 to Lance Briard of River Valley at the Xcel Energy Center Saturday.

Briard started the scoring with an escape in the first period and he took down Grunklee to go up 3-0 in the second period. Grunklee escaped with a minute left in the match, but couldn’t get the match-tying take down.

“I’m happy that I placed, but it would’ve been awesome to win the whole thing,” Grunklee said. “”It’s pretty exciting that I got this far. Not too many people make it this far in wrestling. So, I get to be one of those few. It’s fun.”

Grunklee also lost to Briard in last year on an 11-8 decision.

“I think there’s a mutual respect there,” BP head coach Kevin Driessen said. “It was a back-and-forth match (last year), so I think he was respecting Jarrod’s abilities.”

Grunklee spent the first two weeks of the wrestling season recovering from knee surgery in October after sustained an injury during the football season.

“I didn’t get to wrestle the first part of the year,” Grunklee said. “I came back a little slow, but I was doing better toward the end.”

Grunklee, who finished the season 23-5, pinned Nick Langer of Kenyon-Wanamingo in the third period of the semifinals.

GMLOK’s Lucas Roe ended up in sixth place at 152 pounds in Class ‘AA.’

Roe, a LeRoy-Ostrander senior, lost the fifth place match 6-4 to Carter Holthaus of Albany.

Roe, who finishes with a record of 41-5, pinned Joe Weber of Fairmont-Martin County West in the wrestlebacks and lost 2-1 to Nathanael Holecek of Thief River Falls.