Blue Hawks run away with Kato title

by John Hamilton

The old question was: Do the Thompson Falls Blue Hawks have the wrestlers they need to challenge Eureka for Western B-C division supremacy?

The new question could be: Do the Eureka Lions have the wrestlers they need to challenge Thompson Falls for Western B-C division supremacy?

Proving to be a powerhouse team in their own right this season, the Blue Hawks swept to the title in their own Ted Kato Invitational at Thompson Falls High School Saturday, crowning five individual champs and placing a total of 10 wrestlers in the top four on their way to 184 team points.

Western B-C rivals Mission-Charlo and Plains-Hot Springs finished a distant second and third with 125 and 114 points each, respectively, in the 10-team tourney.

Blue Hawk grapplers Roman Sparks (103 pounds), Garrett Jones (113),Kaleb Frank (120), Jase Sorenson (170) and Austin Cooper (205) all won Kato titles, Alex Viera (152) won second place, Dakota Irvine (182) third and Nathan Ostwald (120), Sam Ostwald (160) and Seth Alarcon (285) fourth. Lucas Anderson (132) and Dane Chojnacky (152) also wrestled for the Hawks Saturday but missed out on placing.

Thompson Falls coach Ian Taylor was happy with how the Kato went, and looks ahead to the rest of the season.

"It was a good weekend, we were happy to be home and put on a good show for our fans," he said. "Our goal was to win the tournament and I am pretty happy with how we wrestled."

With only two weeks left in the regular season, the Hawks will get their first look at their biggest Western B-C rivals this week when they face the Eureka Lions, the defending Western B-C and State B-C team champions, in the Whitefish Duals tournament Friday.

Taylor said the Hawks will have a dual match with Eureka at 2 p.m. that day, followed by matches with Libby and Whitefish at 4 and 5. Eureka is the team Taylor and the Hawks really want to see.

Coach Dan Lemer's

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Lions won the Class B-C Duals Tournament in Great Falls last weekend, outpointing Boulder 48-30 in the championship match. Not wrestling with a full lineup earlier this season, Eureka appears to have recruited some more bodies.

"I see they filled almost all the weights in Great Falls, so they are pretty close to full strength," Taylor said. "It will be good to finally see them in Whitefish and see how we match up."

The Hawks rode a wave of strong wrestling to the Kato championship.

At 103 pounds, Sparks ran his season record to 24-8 with three straight pin wins, coming in times of 3:12, 1:32 and 33 seconds, with the last one over Cody Froster of Kalispell Glacier in the title match.

Jones also recorded three straight pins, in 11 seconds, 3:32 and 32 seconds in the final over Glacier's Bridger Beach. Frank earned his Kato gold with three consecutive pin wins, taking down his opponents in 49 seconds, 1:31 and 1:38, sticking Flathead's Cody Moats in the title match.

One of the best 170-pound grapplers in Montana in any high school classification this season, Sorenson was dominant in his title run, pinning his opponent in 3:52 of the semifinals and then winning a major 15-3 decision from Clark Fork's Trey Green in the final.

An aggressive Cooper manhandled his opponents on his way to the 205 pound title, pinning his first opponent in two minutes and taking down Missoula Sentinel's Josh Gunter in 1:48 of the championship.

Although he won't be around for the rest of the season as he has graduated and will be moving out of the area in the next few weeks, Viera won his way into the championship match at 152. Viera appeared to have that match won but was taken down and near-falled for four points in the closing seconds, and ended up losing 6-5 to Joseph Battelo of Flathead.

Irvine won three matches by pin to earn his third place Kato medal. After losing in the semifinals, Irvine eventually pinned Missoula Sentinel's Nate Holzer in 2:25 of the 182 consolation final.

The Ostwald brothers and Alarcon wrestled well in securing their fourth place Kato medals.

The Hawks warmed up for the annual Kato Invitational with a triangular dual match with Plains-Hot Springs and the Kalispell Flathead JV Friday night at TFHS. The Hawks defeated Flathead 42-27 and Plains-Hot Springs 36-33 in their two matches and P-HS flattened Flathead 42-15 in those matches.

Sorenson and Irvine won their matches by pin against Flathead, and Jones, Anderson and Alarcon registered pin wins against Plains-Hot Springs. The match with P-HS came down to the heavyweight bout with the Hawks trailing 33-30 in team scoring.

Alarcon's pin of P-HS's Steven Yother in 45 seconds erased the Savage Horsemen's lead and gave the Hawks the exciting dual match win.