Thilmony wins; 3 other Hawks medal

Freshman Trae Thilmony won the individual title at 113 pounds and Roman Sparks, Seth Alarcon and Dakota Irvine also earned medals as the Thompson Falls Blue Hawk wrestlers scored 89 points to finish 11th in the Polson Invitational Tournament last weekend.

Wrestled for the first time at the spacious Salish-Kootenai Event Center in Pablo, the Polson Invite featured 20 teams this year. Host Polson won the tourney with 202 points, Lake City out of Coeur d'Alene was second with 201 and Frenchtown finished third with 157.

The Hawks were only a half of a team point out of 10th place by the time all the wrestling was done. Three of the teams – Eureka took sixth, Florence ninth and Mission-Charlo 10th – that finished ahead of the Hawks are Western B-C squads.

"The Western B-C will be a tough division this season," coach Ian Taylor said. "Overall, we had a pretty good tournament last week. A couple of our guys looked a little rusty, but that is to be expected at this point in the season."

The Hawks will keep on task this week, wrestling in the Plains-Hot Springs Quadrangular in Hot Springs Thursday, and competing in the Bob Kinney Classic in Superior Saturday.

Thilmony's run to the 113 title was the highlight of the Polson meet for the Hawks. Already a polished wrestler due to extensive experience gained in youth wrestling before he arrived in high school, Thilmony won his first two matches by pin Friday to gain the semifinals Saturday.

Thilmony defeated Frenchtown's Eli Warner by 11-6 decision in the semis and then registered a major decision win of 10-1 over Caden Hess of Lake City in the championship match.

Sparks, at 126, and Irvine, at 182, also won their ways into the Saturday morning semifinal round. Sparks lost by tech fall to Justin Kovalicky of Missoula Sentinel in his semi and Irvine fell to Polson's Logan Adler by fall.

Sparks won his consolation semifinal by a 9-0 major decision over Glacier's Dylan Schneider, but lost to Dante Venema of Corvallis in the conso finals and settled for fourth place.

Irvine lost by decision to Western B-C rival Trey Green of Superior in the consolation semifinals, and then lost by 3-0 decision to Tate Jones of Frenchtown and settled for sixth place.

Alarcon took the long road to his fifth place medal, wrestling a team-high seven matches in the two days. After losing by fall to Browning's William Keller in the first round, Alarcon won four straight matches, three by pin and one by decision, to land in the consolation semifinals against Superior's Jacob Lapinski. Lapinski won that match by 7-2 decision and Alarcon went on to wrestle Dylan Rollins of Missoula Sentinel in the fifth place match, pinning Rollins in 2:28 to secure the fifth place

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medal.

Shane Reishus (126 pounds), Gage Fuhrman (132), Lucas Anderson (145) and Dane Chojnacky (160) also wrestled, and wrestled competitively, in Polson.

Reishus and Fuhrman went 2-2 in their matches, Chojnacky was 1-2 and Anderson 0-2.

"We only had eight kids entered and six of them were still alive Saturday," Taylor said. "We feel like all the kids wrestled pretty well."