Wrestlers win county dual tourney, place among top five in Shoshoni

With wins over Rocky Mountain and Lovell, the Greybull-Riverside wrestlers won the annual Big Horn County Dual Championships held Thursday evening in Basin.

“First time since I’ve been I’ve been (the head coach)” Rob Nuttall said of reclaiming the title, which comes with a year’s worth of bragging rights.

G-R easily handled the Grizzlies, 53-6, but the Bulldogs put up more of a fight.  

G-R got the wins it needed from its usual point scorers — chief among them, Loomis Alexander, Reece Whisenant, Curtis Strohschein and Caiden Sorensen — but the 40-30 win wouldn’t have been possible without a breakthrough or two in toss-up matches.

“Zack Kuntz had a big one at 190 that was very helpful,” said Nuttall. “I had a feeling if we won one of those, at 175 or 190, we’d win the dual and it turned out that way. It was great for him to get a win that helped the team.”

Nuttall added, “The boys and girls, top to bottom, have been working hard in practice, so to be able to get those big team wins and perform like that is extremely motivating to everyone to stay on that kind of trajectory.”

Shoshoni tournament

G-R spent Friday and Saturday in Shoshoni, competing in the Clash at the Crossroads.

Both teams fared well.  With Alexander and Strohshein earning titles in their respective divisions, the G-R boys amassed 153 points, trailing only Cokeville with 163.5 and Thermopolis with 155 while bettering the totals of 10 other squads.

The G-R girls captured fifth, highlighted by another winning performance by Gabby Dowling.  Shoshoni won it with 131 points, followed by Thermop with 118, Big Piney with 101, Lovell with 78 and G-R with 63.5.

“This is the most competitive tournament squad we’ve had since I’ve been here,” said Nuttall.  “It’s a lot of fun to be in contention as a team — where every match matters. Of course, every match has always mattered, but it is just a little different.

“We are finally starting to see what we’re capable of accomplishing as a team. We just went toe to toe (on the boys side) with two of the best teams in our 2A classification.

In a performance Nuttall described as “dominant,” Alexander pinned all four of his opponents to claim the crown at 140 pounds.

Strohschein, meanwhile, finished with a 2-0 record at heavyweight. “He won a hard-fought battle against a kid from Big Piney in the final,” said Nuttall.  The final of that one was 5-0.

G-R’s other placers included Reece Whisenant, who went 3-1 and placed second at 150; Caiden Sorenson, 2-1 and second at 157; Bennett Sanford, 5-1 and third at 126; Zack Kuntz, 3-1 and third at 190; and Michael Bassett, 2-2 and fourth at 138.

Sanford’s only loss was to Jackson East of Upton, one of the top guys at that weight, but he followed that with four straight wins. “He did a heck of a job in the wrestlebacks and got a big head-to-head win over (Brody Shepard of Shoshoni) along the way.”

Nuttall also credited Whisenant, saying, “He came out of the gate with a couple of ranked kids, but beat a pretty salty kid from Upton (Cullen Davis), then faced a kid from Tongue River who put him out at State last year. Reece won that, 6-2.”  Whisenant dropped the final, 18-2, to Flint Linford of Cokeville, a third-place finisher at state. “It didn’t go our way, but we did some good things,” Nuttall said of the encounter.

Just as he did two days earlier, Kuntz “pulled through for us big time,” said Nuttall. “He lost a match he shouldn’t have in the semis (16-13, to Kasey Jaidan of Lovell), but did nice job shaking it off.  Those wins (that followed) are the ones that often end up being big point swings.  What we did on the boys side was a total team contribution.  You can’t have a performance like that and not credit everyone at every weight. Even those guys who don’t place, if they get one or two wins, they’re still scoring points for the team.”

Wrestlers who fell into that competed-but-did-not-pace category included Jesse Brown, Carter Peasley, Ben Mendenhall, Nikoah Sorenson, Corbin Godfrey and Camden Schriner.

G-R took four girls to the tournament. In addition to Dowling, who went 5-0 over the two days at 135 pounds, the other team members included Makenna Schell, Kaluha Woolsey and Tawny Bertolini.

Schell and Woolsey each went 1-2 in 130-pound pool wrestling before facing off for the 125-pound title, with Woolsey prevailing. Bertolini finished second, falling to one of the top girls in the state in Danika Crumrine of Lovell.  “She faced her Thursday, Friday and Saturday and each time, she went in with a different perspective and  each time she showed improvement,” said Nuttall.

The wrestlers head to Lander later this week for a tournament expected to feature mostly 3A teams. “It’ll be tough, but it’ll also be good (in the sense that) it will provide good opportunities for us to match up with some of the other big names in the state and hopefully gain criteria over them for seeding into the Ron Thon tournament.”