G-R wrestlers take momentum from Lander into conference tournament

Assuming they didn’t lose their edge over the Thanksgiving holiday, the Greybull-Riverside wrestlers should enter this weekend’s conference tournament in Thermopolis feeling pretty good about themselves and their performance at the Lander Invitational.

“It was probably our best outing of the season,” Coach Mark Sanford said of his team, which saw Riley Wiggins, Harper Juneau, Kaysen Nyberg, Quaide Houchin and Haakon Craft win weight classes and Delta Craft and Noah Blakley add second-place finishes.

A few days prior to that, the team had wrestled in a “lackluster” fashion in a home meet in Basin against Worland and Thermopolis. “We looked pretty anemic and didn’t look like we had it — sometimes that happens when you wrestle at home,” said Sanford. “Kids are distracted by other things and coaches can be, too.”

“But after that, we turned up the heat in practice for the next three days and it showed. We did a great job of wrestling in a more aggressive style. We really did some good things as a whole ... kids were shooting good doubles, coming up and finishing them.  Guys like Quaide, Braxten (Link) and really up and down the lineup, we had kids doing things they hadn’t done before, things that we’d practiced.  So hopefully we are moving in the right direction.”

The conference tournament is Saturday in Thermopolis, starting at 10 a.m.  Sanford said there will be A and B divisions on the boys side, but just one division on the girls side, and that he doesn’t plan to move kids around.   Of late, Wiggins has been the team’s only entry in the A division, which is more advanced.  “We’ll have a lot of kids in B — just like we did in Lander,” said Sanford.

Joining G-R in the field will be Cody and Powell, a pair of teams they haven’t seen this season, along with  Lander, Lovell, Riverton, Rocky Mountain, Shoshoni, Thermopolis and Worland. 

Sanford said the goal is for the kids to show they have progressed and have confidence in their ability and what they are doing on the mat. “With our other middle school programs, they are in a conference with smaller teams, so if they win their conference tournament, they move on to face teams from the bigger conference.

“With us, we are in the big conference with those big teams, which is not a bad place for kids to be able to compete and be challenged. We want them moving forward in the right direction and hopefully that’s what we see this weekend.”