Slatoff Earns Runner-Up Honors, Wildcats Place Sixth at Heart Championships
OSKALOOSA, Iowa - Baker men's wrestling senior Nikolas Slatoff came away with a runner-up finish to lead a Wildcats team that placed sixth overall at the 2025-26 Heart Men's Wrestling Championships this past weekend in Oskaloosa, Iowa.
Baker totaled a team score of 89.5 points to place sixth in the team standings, missing out on the top five by 10 points with fifth-place Dickinson State sitting at 99.5 points. Grand View secured its 11th straight Heart title with a tournament-best 264.5 points and seven individual conference champions.
Slatoff was one of seven BU wrestlers to earn placement honors at the two-day conference tournament with three Wildcats taking home sixth-place finishes in Saoul Prado (125), Eli Messick (184) and Hunter Hall (197).
Wrestling at 149 pounds, Slatoff, a senior out of Henderson, Nev., pinned his first two challengers in Oskaloosa before pulling out back-to-back 7-4 decision wins to secure his spot in the championship match. Slatoff would forfeit the title bout due to an injury, giving him an All-Conference finish for the second straight season.
Saoul Prado looked to be in control in the 125-pound bracket, rolling to two straight tech falls on Friday to reach the semifinals of the championship bracket. He dropped his next three matches to follow up his fifth-place outing from last year with another top-six finish.
After coming up short in his first match of the weekend, Messick pounded out three straight victories in the 184-pound bracket to secure the BU senior's first top-six showing at the conference tournament.
In a similar fashion to Messick, Noah Sample bounced back after being tripped up in his first bout at 165 pounds and came out on top of three consecutive matches, including a one-point decision win over Alexander Sederburg of William Woods, who ranks 18th in the NAIA, to place seventh.
Hall and teammate Kevin Lund finished in back-to-back spots for the Wildcats at 197 pounds with Hall taking sixth and Lund following in seventh. Both wrestlers tallied all three of their victories in the bracket by way of a pin as Hall pinned consecutive opponents in the consolation round, while Lund recorded a pin in the placement match to give the junior from Glenpool, Okla., a seventh-place showing.
Nat'aani Prado took eighth at 133 pounds after winning his first match by tech fall and then adding a 7-2 decision win in the second round of the consolation bracket.
As the only Wildcat to earn an automatic spot, Slatoff (149) will be making his second straight trip to nationals and will compete at the 2026 NAIA Men's Wrestling Championships in a couple of weeks.
A total of 254 automatic qualifiers will move forward after all the conference tournaments have concluded in the NAIA. Additionally, 66 at-large selections will be made, three from each weight class.
After the conference tournaments have concluded, a 16-member committee consisting of conference raters and oversight members will meet to select the remaining at-large qualifiers, which will be released Tuesday, February 24, 2026, by 5 p.m. (CST), while the preliminary brackets and seeding will be announced on NAIA.org by 5 p.m. (CST) on Friday, February 27, 2026. All weight classes will consist of 32 wrestlers.
The NAIA Championships are set to take place on March 5-7 at Heartland Credit Union Arena in Wichita, Kan.
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