Sweet Home’s boys and girls both placed third in the Oregon Classic Friday and Saturday, Jan. 13-14, in Redmond.
The tournament lived up to its reputation, with nine of the top 10 4A boys teams competing. Sweet Home’s boys steamrolled their pool competition on Friday and, except for a 40-33 loss to Crook County in the championship semis Saturday, went undefeated, beating Tillamook 49-21 in the consolation final. La Grande, the two-time defending state champions, destroyed the Cheesemakers in the other final, 51-19, then beat Crook County 47-22 to win the 4A title. They were third in a field of 16 teams.
“The 4A is dominant, so stinking tough right now,” Coach Steve Thorpe said after the event. He said he was taking at least some of the blame for the loss to the Cowboys.
“We lost a couple we shouldn’t have, but it was partly poor coaching on my part,” he said. “I adjusted the lineup to make up for some losses and that didn’t work out. You take what you get and you get what you earn. We did beat Tillamook pretty solid.”
The boys rolled through their pool on Friday with wins over Mazama (75-6), Ontario (72-10) and North Marion (84-0), then beat Estacada 72-12 in the semifinals before falling to Crook County.
Kyle Sieminski and Jake Sieminski, and Ethan Spencer, all went undefeated through the weekend, and Thorpe said the Huskies got some good wins. Freshman Tytus Hardee avenged an earlier overtime loss to Tillamook’s Bryce Haltiner, scoring a 10-2 major decision over Haltiner in the consolation final. Daniel Goodwin got a key pin at 147 pounds for Sweet Hone as well, he said.
“We’re pretty solid right now,” Thorpe said. “Guys are getting to the weights they’re going to be at. It was real nice to take a look, to see teams we don’t normally see.
“I took 22 kids, and they all got to see action. All wrestled matches. Some of our JV wrestlers got some varsity action at the Classic, which will help them in the future. We wrestled very well except when we wrestled Crook County.”
The Huskies, he said, are working hard and it’s paying off.
“I don’t know many other programs in the state that are going in there in the mornings, then coming back in the evening, putting in the extra like we are.”
On the girls side, the Huskies won their pool, beating Cleveland 48-12, La Grande 42-18 and McNary 42-18 on Friday. On Saturday they opened the championship bracket competition with a 42-18 win over Grant Union, but then fell 36-24 to La Grande before beating McKay 39-15 to place third out of 12 teams.
Individually, freshman Bailey Chafin and junior Alyssa Peterson, who bounced back and forth between 157 and 177 during the tournament, went undefeated.
“Bailey has continued on a solid trajectory of being a pretty dominant women’s wrestler,” Thorpe said. “Elissa Peterson just continues to get tougher and tougher and tougher. She’s starting to wrestle confident too.
“There’s been some great leadership, keeping the unity, by the older girls. That’s kind of neat to see.”
The Huskies were supposed to host Siuslaw and Marshfield Wednesday, Jan. 18, but Marshfield backed out on Monday of this week so Thorpe said unless he found another team to compete, the event would start at 6 p.m. Also, a scheduling error has forced Sweet Home to withdraw from a trip to Dallas this weekend, he said.