Right: Bruce Lokensgard straining to keep his wrist from touching the table. Bruce rallied form this position to beat Dohn Pagel in the 12th grade boys (180 pounds and above) bracket.

It may have just been “fooling around,” but Lokensgard took it seriously just the same.

The 16-tear-old New Ulm High School senior gained fame although not fortune when he beat John Pagel Saturday night to win the school’s first boys senior heavyweight arm wrestling championship.

Lokengard, who has also wrestled, says he got interested in arm wrestling as a way of “just fooling around,” when students at the school began trying the sport.

Earlier this week, in an arm wrestling session with Pagel that was staged for the camera, Lokesgard had lost.

“I wasn’t ready to arm wrestle,” he says now after reversing the decision.

It didn’t injure his confidence for the big match at the Sadie Hawkins Dance Saturday night, however.

“I thought I would make it through there,” Lokensgard says. “I took it pretty seriously.”

Winners in other class and weight categories were Dave Berle, Terry Kral, Ron Neidecker, LaVonna Dauer, John Dietz, Tim Kohn, Peggy Hoffman, Bode, Brad LeGare, Randy Berg and Nancy Backer.

Would Lokesgard like to continue arm wrestling? If they arm wrestle anywhere else he does, he says, he sure would. It is, he says, a fun sport.

“Everybody competes against each other,” he says.

New Ulm Daily Journal

March 29, 1976