It's tournament time for Idaho high school wrestlers and basketball players including those at Wood River High School and Carey School.
Hailey hosts the seven-school Great Basin Conference wrestling tournament today, Wednesday starting at 11 a.m. on four mats in the high school gym. Visiting will be Jerome, Minico, Burley, Pocatello, Preston and Century of Pocatello.
Wood River coach Tyson Young said a terrific tournament committee is helping him. He expects a great day of wrestling with final matches beginning no later than 6 p.m. on three mats—the championship match on the center mat flanked by third-place and fifth-place matches.
The top five wrestlers in each of 14 weight classes will qualify for the 51st annual Idaho State High School Wrestling Championships Feb. 21-23 at The Idaho Center, Nampa.
Last year's Great Basin Conference team champion was 2006 state champion Minico by the slimmest of margins, 320 to 319.5 over Pocatello. Last year Wood River qualified three wrestlers for state—160-pound conference king Jeff Vert, 189-pound league runner-up Collin Hand and 135-pounder Tanner Orchard.
At Monday's seeding meeting in Rupert, coaches seeded six wrestlers in each class and Wood River earned four seeds. They were #3-seeded Hand at 189, #4-seeded Orchard at 145, #5-seeded Andrew Orr at 152 and #6-seeded Alex Jones at 160.
Carey girls, WRHS boys
Coach Lane Durtschi's Carey School girls (12-8) open the 16-team State 1A girls' basketball tournament today, Wednesday with a 6:15 p.m. game against First District champion Kootenai (8-12) at Nampa High gym.
Kootenai, a 33-26 district winner over Clark Fork Feb. 6, returns to the state tournament where the Warriors from Harrison went 1-2 last February including a 51-31 victory over this year's top-ranked team, Hagerman. Meanwhile, it is Carey's first state trip since 2000 when the Panthers went 1-2 including a 38-point win over Kootenai, at Kuna.
Carey, a 72-55 loser to Raft River of Malta last Wednesday in a state seeding game at Murtaugh, has won seven of its last nine games. Top scorer Jessica Parke (9.6 ppg) scored 16 points and Shelby Hansen (4.5 ppg) stayed hot with 10 in the seeding game against Raft River.
Northside champion and reigning state champion Richfield (20-3), Dietrich (17-9), Raft River (16-7) and Hagerman (20-3) are the other Fourth District teams going to state.
It's only the fourth state tournament trip in Carey girls' annals.
Meanwhile, the Wood River High School boys' basketball team (5-14) opened the Great Basin Conference West tournament Tuesday night against top-ranked defending State 4A champion Burley (20-0), winner of 39 straight games over two years.
A loss to Burley would have meant Wood River would travel to the loser of Tuesday's game between Minico of Rupert (14-6, 3-3) and Jerome (13-7, 3-3) for a loser-out game Thursday, Feb. 14 at 7 p.m.
Wood River finished its regular season Saturday night with a 71-43 loss at Pocatello, leading scorer Matt Staskiewicz (11.8 ppg) leading the way with 14 points and junior Bryan Tidwell adding 8. Thursday's "Senior Night" home game against Glenns Ferry was snowed out.
