Thinking of Iowa

The Thompson Falls Little Guys will be moving on to the Western Montana Championships in Kalispell this weekend but some of them will undoubtedly be thinking of Iowa instead.

The Inter-Valley Tournament, the final qualifier for this week's Western Montana Championships, was wrestled in Stevensville Saturday and six Novice, Middle and Junior High wrestlers placed in the top eight there to earn their ways on to Kalispell this week.

The wrestling in Kalispell will begin Friday at Glacier High School with the Junior High grapplers going at it beginning at 5 p.m. The Novice wrestlers will engage at 9 a.m. Saturday followed by the Middle grapplers at noon.

Elijah Ratliff (Junior High-105) and Trae Thilmony (JH-112) won first place in the Inter-Valley, Max Hannum (JH-120) placed second, Noa Stevens (Novice-100) took fourth, Isaiah Sprecher (Middle-70) won fifth, and Liam Pallister (Novice-85) placed sixth.

All six Falls Little Guys will now move on to wrestle at Glacier High School in Kalispell this weekend, but Ratliff and Thilmony, who will now be joined by several other Falls wrestlers, are also making plans for the National Schoolboy Duals in Iowa next week as well.

Blue Hawk Wrestling Club coach Mike Thilmony, who has been named as a coach for one of the several Montana schoolboy teams that will be travelling to Iowa, said that his son Trae and Ratliff, who had already made the grade for those teams, will be joined by Hawk high school grapplers Roman Sparks, Kaleb Frank and Jase Sorenson in going to Iowa.

Trae Thilmony will be a 'starter' at 105 for one of Montana's middle school teams and Ratliff will be an alternate at 105, and late additions Sparks, Frank and Sorenson, who earned personal invitations from the head of the Montana delegation heading to Iowa last week, will also be making the trip.

Sparks will be an alternate for one of the Montana freshman-sophomore teams, while Frank and Sorenson will represent a junior-senior team from the Big Sky Country as the team's No. 1 wrestlers at 126 and 170 pounds, respectively.

Both seniors, Frank won the State B-C individual title at 126 pounds in February and Sorenson won third at 170, after taking second at that weight as a junior.

Sparks was ranked among the best B-C wrestlers at 103 pounds last season but a late injury kept him from competing in the State B-C meet.

In other mat news, the brother-sister grappling duo of Weston and Hartleigh Block are set to compete in the prestigious Montana Open, a meet coach Thilmony calls the biggest of any wrestling season in Montana, at the Metra in Billings this weekend. Both Block kids competed well in a meet in Great Falls last week.