Warriors have solid showing at home tournament

Oregon schools place in the top 5

Members of the North Medford High wrestling team look over the brackets in the hallway at Del Norte High School on Saturday. More than 200 grapplers took part in the event. Del Norte Triplicate/Bryant Anderson

A highlight for the Warriors was senior heavyweight Isaac Terry taking first place, as he won all his matches by pin.

“He’s a smart wrestler and didn’t make too many mistakes,” assistant coach Aaron Schaad said.

Another strong performance by Del Norte was by sophomore Hawk Mattz, who took second place at 160 pounds. Sophomore Eric Turner took fifth place at 182 pounds and around seven Warriors were only a match away from placing, Schaad said.

The top-placing team from the Humboldt-Del Norte Conference was defending champion Hoopa, which finished seventh out of 17 teams.

The Oregon squads dominated the competition on Saturday. North Medford took the top spot with a final score of 213.5, with Illinois Valley coming in second place. The next three placers were all Oregon schools.

The event has become a tradition for many teams and brings many top wrestlers to Crescent City.

Schaad was proud with how the young Warriors squad performed. Especially considering the fact that four starters were unable to wrestle for a variety of reasons as several newcomers stepped up.

“I was happy with how we did,” he said. “We had a great opportunity to get a lot of new kids out there wrestling.”

This included senior Austin Moore, who had not wrestled in high school before but made it to the quarterfinals at heavyweight. Another newcomer, Dennis Pace, took sixth place at 220 pounds.

After having 13 teams compete last year, attendance increased to 17 squads this year as 217 wrestlers took part in the all-day event which brought out more than 1,000 spectators.

Because they had more teams this year they were able to offer more matches.

Schaad said that many coaches commended him and the other coaches for having enough kids take part so all levels of wrestlers were able to participate and gain vital experience.

“It ran real smoothly,” Schaad said. “We couldn’t be happier.”

With how successful the event went this year, Schaad hopes to have even more teams take part next year.

Del Norte next wrestles at a tournament in McKinleyville on Saturday.