Savage Horsemen wrestle in Florence

On to Choteau.

Fresh off a third place finish in the five-team Mike McChesney Memorial tournament in Florence Saturday, coach Jeff Kujala and his Plains-Hot Springs Savage Horsemen grapplers head to Choteau this weekend for the annual Choteau Invitational, traditionally one of the biggest and best Class B-C wrestling meets of any season.

Hampered somewhat by various maladies to his wrestlers, Kujala says P-HS will take a reduced lineup into Choteau.

“We are kind of beat up right now,” he said. “A few kids have some injuries they are trying to work through, we have a couple others with possible concussions and one with mono.

“We did okay in Florence. We still have a lot of work to do,” he added, “but overall, we did pretty well.”

Conrad Vanderwall (at 138 pounds) and Jesse Uski (160) earned McChesney championships in their divisions, Mason Elliott (120) and Gage Fuhrman (145) earned second place medals, Peter Carey (132) placed third and Stephen Yother (205) fourth.

Kujala said the Florence tournament will attempt to draw more local teams in the future, but that the turnout for it this year was not all that large.

“It’s a new tournament, they are still trying to establish it,” he said. “I’m sure they will get more teams in it in the future, but it was a pretty small field this year.”

Hamilton-Darby won the McChesney team title with 128 points, Florence was second with 73, Plains-Hot Springs third with 66, the Missoula Hellgate JV fourth with 62 and Bigfork fifth with 51.

Kujala says his Savage Horsemen grapplers look forward to mixing it up in Choteau this week.

“This is always a good tournament,” he said. “We are a little over halfway through the season and we still have work to do. Choteau should give us a better idea of what we need to work on, what we need to do in the next few weeks.”