Sweet Home is recognized as the top 4A wrestling team in Oregon in the most recent polls and the Huskies proved why Saturday at the Willamette Invitational.
Sweet Home came off the holiday break to win the 19-team event with 217.5 points, ahead of Churchill, the No. 2-ranked 5A team in the state, which tied for second with a combined JV and varsity squad from Roseburg with 189.5 points.
Thurston, ranked sixth in the 5A division, was fourth (166) and Grants Pass, ninth in the 6A, was fifth (156), followed by Illinois Valley, the next closest 4A team, in sixth with 99.5 points.
“We wrestled very good,” Coach Steve Thorpe said. “But we didn’t wrestle consistent as a team. We lost matches we shouldn’t have lost. Doing that in a big tournament, when you’re losing matches you should win, you’re taking yourself out of a trophy.”
Three of the seven Huskies who made the championship round won individual championships: Colton Schilling at 103 pounds, Mitch Grove at 125 and Kris Newport at 145.
Schilling, who has yet to be taken past the second round this season, pinned Korbin Hawes of Thurston in 3:06 to win the 103-pound class.
“He forces his style on people, he forces his will on people,” Thorpe said of the freshman.
Grove pinned Joe Potts of Churchill in 3:02.
“Mitch has such incredible conditioning, that’s how he keeps going,” Thorpe said.
Newport, in his first tournament since shoulder surgery last summer, “was eager to be back,” Thorpe said, and held off a dogged opponent in Roseburg’s Hector Mandera to win 5-4.
Runner-ups for the Huskies were Tyler Cowger, who lost to Grants Pass’s Luke Collins 4-1; Taylor Tagle, who was blanked 10-0 by Joe Gardner of Thurston in the 135-pound final; Marshall Arndt, who lost 6-2 to Robbie Bird of Thurston at 140 pounds; and Brock Crocker, who lost a superior decision to Churchill’s Zac Brunson 19-4 at 152 pounds. Brunson, a sophomore who was second in the nation last year in Greco and is already an All-American several times over, was named Wrestler of the Meet.
Thorpe said Arndt’s performance was notable in that he beat fifth-ranked Chase Kearney of Churchill en route to the final.
“On paper maybe he shouldn’t have won that one, but he wrestled well,” Thorpe said.
He said Tagle also had a notable win, beating second-ranked Nathan Piader of Grants Pass in the semifinals.
Other place-winners for Sweet Home at Willamette were Tyler Holly, third at 119, and Wade Paulus, sixth at 171 pounds.
Thorpe said Holly “wasn’t ready mentally or physically” for his first-round “tough” match against eventual winner Houston Ezell of Churchill, but Holly recovered to pin his next four opponents to take the consolation title.
In other wrestling action Saturday for Sweet Home, Kyle Hummer won the 140-pound title at the Willamina Tournament.
Thorpe said that with the holidays over, “now we can get ready for the Oregon Classic next Friday and Saturday and see if we can’t get some things accomplished.”
The tournament, which includes many of the top teams and wrestlers in Oregon from all levels, begins at 9 a.m. Friday at the Deschutes County Fairgrounds in Redmond and resumes Saturday at 10 a.m.
Then, on Wednesday, Jan. 13, Sweet Home will host a Japanese cultural exchange team in a match at 6:30 p.m. that will include Sweet Home and other top Willamette Valley wrestlers. Tentative cost will be $4 per adult and $2 per child, Thorpe said Monday.