Wrestlers place fourth at tourney

The Mountain Home Tigers finished fourth at the Madison Invitational Wrestling Tournament at Rexburg over the weekend.

North Fremont won the varsity competition, scoring 194 points. Blackfoot was second with 164.5 points. Sandpoint finished third with 143, just 2.5 points ahead of Mountain Home. Teton was fifth with 116 points. There were 12 teams competing at the two-day tournament.

Finishing second with the Tigers were Kaeo Doronio at 112 pounds and Calvin Vivier at 135.

Third-place efforts went to Daniel Doronio at 125 pounds, A.J. Hutchinson at 140, and Chris Knudson at 171 pounds.

Finishing in fifth place were Nico Pinque at 130 pounds, Kori Andrews at 160, Tyson Sessions at 189 and Charles Davidson at 215.

Sixth-place efforts went to T.J. Billinger at 103 pounds and Blake Pharis, wrestling at 275 pounds.

There was also a junior varsity Tournament held at Madison and Mountain Home came in second out of 12 teams competing in the JV tourney.

Blackfoot won the competition with 261.5 points. Mountain Home was a distant second with 163.5 points, followed by Sandpoint, 128.5, Teton, 119 and Bonneville, 102.5.

Eight Mountain Home wrestlers placed in the JV tourney, led by Kamron Spaulding and Colby Lord, who were champions at 130 and 160 pounds, respectively.

Second place went to Matt Ward at 171 pounds.

Ty Kleffner (135 pounds), Robby Bergh (145) and Lucas Greer (275) all took third, and fourth place went to Ryan Hammer at 152 pounds and Tyler Charters at 275 pounds.

Mountain Home Tiger wrestling coach Lynn Knudson was pleased with the efforts at the Madison tourney.

"We've been working on getting people back and getting them in the right spots, and this was really our first tournament other than the Bonneville Duals prior to the Christmas break, and it was a bracket-type tournament, a little bit different type of wrestling, and I was happy the way things worked.

"You could tell that we haven't been at tournaments this year, just by how we look in the third period, but as time goes on and as the year gets further in, we'll have that many more matches and things will start working for us a little bit better with our kids.

"I was happy with the way the JV and varsity both ended up in the tournament, and hopefully, we'll keep it up."

The Tigers are at Caldwell tonight (Wednesday) for a double dual, wrestling Caldwell at 5 p.m. and Bishop Kelly at 6:30 p.m.

This weekend a majority of the Tigers will travel to Idaho Falls for the Tiger-Grizz Tournament.

"We won't be taking a full squad over there (to the Tiger-Grizz) ," said Coach Knudson. "We'll be taking the majority of our guys, but there are a few that I think we'll just leave and let them work at practice and work on things a little bit.

"They've been working the last couple weekends at different tournaments and we'll give them a break and keep them in the room and learn a little bit more and good things will happen to them."