Younger squad prepares for wrestling season opener

The Mountain Home Tigers open their wrestling season with a home conference dual against Nampa today, Dec. 7.

Mountain Home Tiger head wrestling coach Lynn Knudson feels good about the wrestlers he has out this year.

"We're young. We have about 33 out. Hopefully, we can keep them all out and I think we can do some good things," the coach said, who added the team brings a lot of experience.

"I think we have 12 kids on the team right now that were pretty heavy in the varsity lineup last year, but with those weight classes this year changing, it's to be seen just exactly how everything pans out as far as positioning. We have varsity experience, but we were young last year, too.

"I think with what we do have coming back, we're going to be pretty solid in six to eight weight classes, and we'll just have to go from there."

The Idaho High School Activities Association made some changes at its September meeting, finalizing a new weight classification system, adding a 98-pound weight class, making 15 weight classes and changing the weight on some the weight classes by a few pounds.

Although not a big fan of the change, Knudson believes they can learn to live with it.

"This year there's 15 weight classes, and it starts out at 98 (pounds) this year. It used to start at 103, then 112, 119, and now all that is changed after a three-year study, and it kind of throws us... not so much a disadvantage, because everybody has to follow it, but it kind of throws a loop in things, where you're so used to all the weight classes -- and the kids are, too -- now that's all changed.

We'll deal with it the way we can, but there will be kids probably starting off at one weight class and probably dropping to one or going up to one, so that's going to change things a little bit, but overall, it will works its way out."

The new 15 weight classes are 98 pounds, 106, 113, 120, 126, 132, 138, 145, 152, 160, 170, 182, 195, 225 and 285 pounds.

Coach Knudson sees Columbia as the team to beat in conference this year.

"Columbia is strong again, and actually they have one of our wrestlers (Tyler Rios) that went there, and they've picked up a few others. There's a lot of open enrollment -- or recruiting as a lot of people want to say -- at some of these programs, which I think is terrible that that's happening within our state, but those things happen, or it's being allowed."

The Tigers open their season tonight with a conference dual against the Nampa Bulldogs in Lloyd Schiller Gymnasium.

"I think that's going to be a great, great match, and getting back to our conference, I think Columbia's going to be top, I think Kuna's going to be in there, and Nampa, and we should have some votes in there in the top four or five -- that's where we've been sitting here lately, and we're still that good."

Knudson hopes his Tigers can have a successful season and get as many wrestlers on to state where they will do well.

"It's our our job as coaches to get them to that point where they get through district to make it on to state, and we've been pretty successful," he said. "We did really well last year getting more kids up to the state level, more than I thought we were going to get, so I was pretty happy with that, and I think that can happen again this year.

"What's really exciting about our team is that we have a lot of young kids on it right now, and we're going to have to keep them out and keep them healthy and build off of them, because that's the future. We've got a good group coming in behind them, too, so if we can make that all happen we'll be good here for another couple of years."

Varsity action gets under way tonight at 7:30 p.m. The Tigers will be at the Buck's Bags Tournament at Capital this Friday and Saturday.