ELKHORN — John Watson has been a part of some memorable moments in his nearly 20 seasons coaching the Wilmot wrestling team.

But Saturday may have topped them all.

In a dominating performance, the Panthers captured a whopping six individual titles in the Southern Lakes Conference Meet at Elkhorn High School. That easily led the Panthers to the meet title with 245.5 points, ahead of second-place Burlington’s 210.

It also captured an overall co-conference championship for Wilmot, which shared the title with Burlington. The Demons were first and the Panthers second in the regular-season dual meet standings, so the conference meet flip-flop created a dead heat atop the final standings.

“We’ve won a few conference titles, but this might be the best one,” said Watson, who guided his team to seven Lakeshore Conference titles (six outright) in the last decade.

The difficulty of the SLC only added to the magnitude of the Panthers’ performance Saturday.

“This ain’t the Lakeshore,” Watson said. “This conference is much, much tougher, it really is. And so I guess winning it might mean a little more.”

Burlington defeated Wilmot by nearly 40 points in a dual meet this season, but the Panthers remained confident they could excel in a tournament.

“I’m extremely proud of the guys, especially since we lost against Burlington in the duals,” said Kyle Welzen, a two-time state qualifier who entered Saturday ranked fourth in Division-1 by Wisconsin Wrestling Online at 135 pounds and successfully defended his 135-pound conference title with a major decision over Delavan-Darien’s Kiefer Bennett.

They finished pretty handily ahead of us. We came in here and we said, ‘We’re going to wrestle the best we can. We’re a good tournament-wrestling team, and we’re gonna beat ’em.’”

The Panthers dominated the middle weights with titles out of Adam Neal at 130 pounds, Welzen at 135, Matt Gray at 140 and Ryan Gartner at 145. James Huey added a title at 171, but the most shocking win was Dustin Edmonds’ pin of Lake Geneva Badger’s sixth-ranked Joe Cychner at 285, the only pin of the championship round by any wrestler.

“I was surprised I even did that,” said Edmonds.

Central sixth

Central finished sixth in the team standings with 115 points. The Falcons got a second-place finish out of Bill Langford at 145 pounds and a third-place showing from Tim Cho at 103.