Thompson Falls places second at Mission

Matt Unrau

It looks like nothing has changed for the Thompson Falls Bluehawks after the Christmas break. Picking up right where they left off the team traveled to St. Ignatius last weekend and came away with a second place finish at the meet behind two championship wins from Tanner Gascon(135) and Erik Hilety(189).

Frenchtwon took place at the meet with 240 points, while the Bluehawks finished second with 140 points.

“That is a pretty good gage of where we are at in our division…we haven’t lost to a b-c team in a tournament in the last three tournaments,” says Head Coach Colby Cline. “It’s starting to look like it’s gonna be Florence and us for the(divisional) title with Mission right there too.”

On an individual level Gascon really shined at the meet, avenging his loss to Garrett Stephens of Superior at Polson, by pinning him in the championship match.

“It was a big victory for him and it was against a divison wrestler which makes it even more important,” says Cline. “He has picked it up a notch, being a senior he’s starting to wrestle like it’s his senior year. He’s pretty focused on what he wants to do.”

Cline hopes to see the senior place at the state meet and expects the tough competition in his weight class at the Divisonal meet to really toughen him up for the state meet.

For Hilety he is still undefeated in the conference and has won every one of his conference matches by pin. He pinned Jarrad Wisherd of Frenchtown in the title match.

Thompson Falls also finished with a pair of second place medals at the meet as Richard Lyons and Sean Sacci both wrestled well enough to come away with hardware.

The Bluehawks will next head to Ronan for a Duals Tournament where they will get a chance to face the bigger schools, different wrestlers and get a lot of time in the ring.

“The good thing is we get a lot of matches out of it…all the kids get four or five matches this weekend,” says Cline. “We get to see divison a lot this season and it’s nice to see someone else.”

Cline is also looking forward to the harder competition knowing that even though the AA and A schools may not send out their best kid everytime it will always be a tough kid.

“If you don’t ever wrestle tough competition you never know where you stand,” says Cline.