Savage Horsemen wrestle in Ronan

It’s difficult to compete in a dual tournament when you only fill eight of the 13 weights.

It becomes even more difficult when a couple of those eight wrestlers are sick, reducing your roster to only six.

The undermanned Plains-Hot Springs Savage Horsemen, who were able to fill less than half of a complete lineup, still wrestled gamely in the Western Montana Duals tournament in Ronan Friday and Saturday.

“It’s hard to compete in duals when you have a small number of kids, and our numbers were reduced even more by a little bit of the flu bug,” P-HS coach Jeff Kujala said. “The kids we had last week wrestled well but the chances of us winning duals was greatly reduced by not having that many wrestlers.”

Kujala said his mat men and women enjoyed the chance to see some different competition, in spite of their competitive disadvantage in numbers.

“It was nice to see some new competition, kids we normally don’t see,” Kujala said, “and our kids competed hard. It was a good tournament for us in that respect.”

In the matches P-HS wrestlers competed in, the Savage Horsemen out-pointed the Clark Fork Mountain Cats 21-15, and lost dual matches to Corvallis (39-13), Stevensville (36-30) and Ronan (36-24).

Against Clark Fork, Conrad Vanderwall, Josiah Vanderwall and Bert DeTienne all wrestled up one class at 138, 145 and 152, and each of them won, while Jesse Uski (160) and heavyweight Stephen Yother lost be decision in their matches.

Versus Corvallis, Conrad Vanderwall lost a tough 4-0 decision to Dante Venema at 132 and Josiah Vanderwall pinned Triston Davis in 4:34 at 138. DeTienne (145), Jesse Uski (160) and Yother all dropped matches with the Blue Devils.

Wrestling officially for the first time this season, Mason Ganarelli had to withdraw from his match with Randon Weidow at 160 pounds due to a shoulder injury.

Peter Carey (120 pounds), the Vanderwalls, and DeTienne all won their matches by pin against Stevensville, and Josiah Vanderwall, DeTienne and Uski won matches by pin against Ronan.

Kujala said Yother picked up a heavyweight win Saturday to highlight P-HS results from that day but no other match results were available.

The annual Choteau Tournament is next for many of the Class B-C mat teams in the state, including P-HS. That well-attended tournament, generally regarded as one of the best of any regular season, begins Friday and finishes up Saturday in Choteau.

“Next to state, this tournament offers the best opportunity to see wrestlers from all over the state,” Kujala said. “We always look forward to Choteau in large part because we can get a look at some of the northern and southern teams we normally don’t see in the regular season.”

The Savage Horsemen set the B-C wrestling world on its ear two years ago by shocking the field and winning the Choteau tournament team title, marking one of the few instances where a Western B-C team has won the prestigious tourney in recent times.