Plains places three at St. Ignatius

Matt Unrau

In the first wrestling meet of the new year the Plains wrestlers traveled to St. Ignatius and half of the team came back sporting medals. Kenneth Beech finished second at the meet only losing to Tyler Stedman of Frenchtown, Kris Beech placed fourth and Zoe Banovich placed for the first time in her high school career, coming in fourth.

All three wrestlers lost to the same Frenchtown wrestlers that they have lost to in previous tournaments.

“We’re still wrestling pretty well,” says Head Coach Kenny Marjerrison. “We’re not losing to B-C teams, just Frenchtown is all we seem to lose to.”

Kenneth admitted to a little bit of frustration of losing to Stedman for the third time especially since other than Stedman and another Frenchtown wrestler who beat him early in the year he doesn’t see as high as competition regularly. Because of this he looks to keep honing his skills in practice.

It was a good test for Plains as many of the 11 teams that made it to Mission will be present at the Divisional meet. Only Florence and Drummond were not at St. Ignatius.

A wrestler that did not place at the meet, but still wrestled extremely well is Cole Goodwin who moved down a weight class from 140 to 135.

“It helps a lot. He was wrestling above his ideal weight. Wrestling kids his own size makes a huge difference,” says Marjerrison. After three tough matches Goodwin was only a couple points from getting in the third and fourth place match.

For Banovich who got her first placing she says the style of wrestling she has to adopt is different from the guys she typically has to wrestle at each meet.

“You’ve got to be more aggressive than all the guys. You have got to be quicker and faster than them because you’re not going to be stronger,” says Banovich.

For their next meet Banovich and the other wrestlers will be traveling to Ronan for a Duals Tournament that features a lot of matches for the wrestlers.

Marjerrison says it will be a good meet for his team especially since the week afterwards they will be traveling to Choteau for the biggest meet of the year, which is really indicative of the state meet.