It was a Challis kind of tournament, but Wood River High School wrestlers had things to brag about as well during the annual Bear Cat mat tournament Friday and Saturday in Jerome and Twin Falls.
Wood River took 15 wrestlers to the two-day tournament, which included the 16-team varsity meet at Jerome High School and the 16-team junior varsity gathering at O'Leary Junior High School in Twin Falls.
The Challis Vikings won the varsity tourney with 220 points including 10 placers and four individual champs. Minico was second with 150 points, Kimberly third with 146, Jerome fourth at 125 and Wood River 13th with 41.5 points over two days.
Wood River senior Greg Lyons, at 171 pounds, went 4-1 and captured third place in the varsity meet. Lyons (8-1 season) won the consolation championship Saturday with a 9-6 decision over Jerome's Britt Thiessen.
It was sweet revenge for Lyons, who had lost his first match of the season Friday to Thiessen 3-1. The champion at 171 was Wes Cooper of Minico 4-3 over Kimberly's Joey Silva.
Another Silva, Sonny Silva of Kimberly, won the tough 125-pound class with a close 6-5 decision over Ryan Shuman. Silva was last year's State 3A 119-pound runner-up while Shuman won the 2004 5A state championship in the same 119 class.
"It was a loaded weight class," said Wood River coach Danny Turner about the high caliber of wrestlers.
Wood River sophomore Murdock Miller (6-3) was one of the wrestlers in the hotly-competitive 125-pound class and Miller finished fourth—winning three of his five matches at Jerome.
He won his second match of the day Friday with a double overtime decision over a highly-regarded Elko (Nev.) wrestler, then Miller was pinned by Shuman in Saturday's championship semi-finals. Then, Miller was decisioned by Challis senior Jimmy Butts 6-0 in the consolation championship. Butts had won the State 2A title at 119 pounds in 2003.
Wood River freshman 103-pound Isaac Sherbine (6-2) went 2-2 in his first big varsity tournament, and Hailey freshman 189-pound Collin Hand (4-4) also went 2-2. Coach Turner said Hand wrestled very well at Jerome.
"Collin won his first two matches Friday then was tied 3-3 with (Matt) Verbeck of Challis with 20 seconds left on the clock. Verbeck took a shot and got a controversial takedown with 15 seconds left and won 5-3," said Turner, who said Hand hurt his neck a little during the tough match.
Still, it was quite an improvement over the first time Hand wrestled Verbeck, in Hailey Dec. 10 when Verbeck pinned him in the second round.
Junior Josh Orchard at 140 pounds and sophomore Jordan Vert at 145 each won a match in the varsity meet. Wood River assistant coaches Kim Orchard and Don Miller guided the older boys at Jerome last weekend.
Meanwhile, head coach Turner took the nine Wolverine junior varsity wrestlers to O'Leary. Some of the kids hadn't yet wrestled this year and they got good exposure during the tourney.
JV Wrestler of the Week was Jordan Rubenstein at 152 pounds. He made the consolation semi-finals with two pins and a decision and finished with three match wins in five tries.
Winning twice in the JV meet were Josh Christiansen at 119 pounds, Ricky Maxwell at 125, Jesse Broadie at 152 and T.J. Squires at 215. Alex Burwell at 189 and Christian Aguirre at 275 pounds each won a match. Also competing were Jonathan Diem at 112 and Matt Libert at 135 pounds.
