Vanderwall wins 3rd Choteau title

The great Russell Kujala never did this. James DeTienne and Andrew Leichtnam, two other fabled P-HS state champion wrestlers, never did either. But now, Plains senior Josiah Vanderwall has, and he hopes to use it as a springboard for even bigger and better things in the coming weeks.

Vanderwall wrestled his way to the 138 pound championship in the Choteau Tournament last week, becoming the first Plains-Hot Springs Savage Horsemen wrestler to ever win three individual titles in the storied annual tourney on the Hi-Line.

Peter Carey won fifth place at 120 pounds and Conrad Vanderwall wrestled down sixth at 132 for P-HS’s other highlights in Choteau. The Savage Horsemen scored 59.5 points to finish 13th in final team standings. Josiah Vanderwall’s points from his title match against Choteau’s Pete Henderson gave the Savage Men the cushion they needed to finish just ahead of the host Choteau squad in team scoring.

Taylor Angle (103 pounds), Kenzie Angle (138), Bert DeTienne (145) and Jesse Uski (160) also wrestled in Choteau. Grapplers who lost matches in the early rounds were able to get more wrestling in at the junior varsity tourney run concurrently with the varsity event, coach Jeff Kujala said.

“The kids all wrestled pretty well, 13th out of 31 teams with the limited amount of wrestlers we have is a pretty good result,” he said. “Josiah’s third Choteau title was the highlight but all the kids wrestled competitively.”

Josiah pinned his way to his latest Choteau crown, sticking Eli Tidwell of Bigfork in 2:57, flattening Choteau’s Kaide Kindler in 2:47 of the quarters, taking down Jonny Chamberlain in 1:07 of the semis, and finally pinning Henderson in 4:41 of the championship final.

“Josiah and Henderson went 1-1 against each other last year and Josiah lost to him in the fifth-sixth place match at state,” Kujala said. “There’s a good chance they could see each other again later on.”

Carey went 4-2 in Choteau, winning fifth place with a pin win over Cut Bank’s Kierren Rooney in 3:23. Conrad Vanderwall was 2-3 in his matches at 132 pounds, and he split with Western B-C rival Cole Gilleard of Mission-Charlo, pinning Gilleard in the second round but being pinned by him in the fifth-sixth place match.

DeTienne, who has been battling illness recently, won his first match in Choteau before losing out, Taylor Angle ended up winning two and losing two and Uski went 0-2.

Kenzie Angle suffered a possible concussion in her first match at Choteau and didn’t wrestle again.

Coach Kujala looks forward to the rest of the season, including the Ted Kato Invitational in Thompson Falls Saturday.

“Choteau was a good tournament for us, we saw a lot of the teams from the north and south,” he said, “and were able to size up some of the competition we will see later on.”