Fresh off the Ronan Duals meet, P-HS grapplers head to Florence

The Plains-Hot Springs Savage Horsemen did not wrestle in the Florence Invitational last Saturday as it was incorrectly printed they would in the Ledger last week.

The Savage Horsemen will wrestle in the Florence Invitational this Saturday as it is correctly printed in the Ledger now.

Like almost every other Class B-C or A team in this particular corner of the Big Sky Country, coach Jeff Kujala and his Savage Horsemen grapplers were competing in the Ronan Duals Friday and Saturday, and Kujala was happy with how his athletes in singlets did in that meet.

“We really don’t have enough wrestlers to compete with teams with larger lineups,” Kujala said, “so dual results can be a little misleading. But I am real pleased with how the kids wrestled in Ronan.

“We got to wrestle a lot of matches,” he continued, “and the folks in Ronan did a real good job of running it. We were able to get kids extra matches outside of the duals.”

In dual action Friday, the Savage Horsemen faced Libby (the Loggers won 36-30), the Flathead JV (the Braves won 42-36), Frenchtown (the Broncs won 50-18) and finally Deer Lodge (the Savage Horsemen won 42-24).

Back on the mats Saturday, P-HS had duals with Hamilton, the Glacier JV and Whitefish, although scores from those matches were not available.

Conard Vanderwall won all three of his matches by pin Friday at 138 pounds, Peter Carey also picked up three pin wins at 126 and Mason Elliott won two matches by pin at 120.

Taylor Angle (113 pounds), Gage Fuhrman (145), Bert DeTienne (152) and Jesse Uski (160) all won by pin against the Flathead JV. Angle also pinned her opponent in the match against Deer Lodge.

“All the kids wrestled well,” Kujala said. “We are pleased with their efforts, we feel like everyone is progressing.”

As stated in the beginning of this story, P-HS wrestlers will compete in the Florence Invitational Saturday in the Bitterroot Valley. As of this writing, Kujala was unsure of which teams, outside of Florence and P-HS, will be in the tournament.

Many if not most of the Class B-C teams in Montana will be at the Cut Bank Invitational this week.

In Florence, the tourney field will likely be filled out with several Class A and junior varsity Class AA squads from the area.

In his first mat action of the year Carey, a returning letter-winner, looked fairly sharp. “Peter didn’t look bad, and he should only get better now,” Kujala said. “It’s good to have him back in the lineup.”