Wrestlers continue conquest in Kittitas

The Raider wrestlers traveled to Kittitas on Saturday, where four of them placed in the Coyote Classic tournament, two of them in the top spot.

Out of the six Raiders competing at the tournament, four were wrestling for team points. Lake Roosevelt placed fifth out of 17 teams with 72 points. Selah, a 2A school, won the tournament with 172 points.

Wrestling in the 113-pound division, Kaleb Horn pinned Ben Graf of Ellensburg in two minutes 26 seconds, then narrowly defeated Joe Moen of Cle Elum 8-7 to take the first-place spot. “That was a hard-fought match,” Head Coach Steve Hood said.

Tony Nichols, wrestling at 138, pinned Trace Townsend of Ellensburg in 3:35, then defeated Jesse Johnson of Selah 8-0 and Chris Jones of Colfax 9-1 to take first.

At 195, Steven Flowers pinned Garrett Pollard of Selah only 44 seconds into the first round. Flowers then was pinned by Jerome Lael of Kittitas. Lael took first and Flowers took second.

At 120, Jon Shelly lost 17-13 to Felix Rangel from Wahluke. Shelly then pinned Karson Krouse from Pomeroy in 3:35, then Jordan Ahola of Cle Elum in only 47 seconds to take third.

Taylor Circle, also in the 120 division, also pinned Krouse, in 3:53, but lost to Ahola by pin, and to Selah’s Daniel Callahan by points.

Ida Sue, wrestling exhibition matches, pinned her opponents from Almira-Coulee-Hartline and Lind-Ritzville, but lost 4-3 to her opponent from Napavine.

“I felt like they had done a good job of using what they learned last week in Rainier,” Hood said of his wrestlers. “We were pretty happy with the way everybody wrestled.”

The Raiders wrestled last night at a mixer in Wilbur against Wilbur-Creston-Keller wrestlers. Three wrestlers are going to Pateros today to build up their match numbers, and on Saturday they travel to Oroville for the League Mix & Match scheduled to start at 10 a.m. Results of these three events will be in next week’s Star.