Little Guy wrestlers close in on championship

SUPERIOR – For the last several months, the county’s youngest athletes have been facing off against kids from all over the region as they participate in the Little Guy Wrestling competitions.

On Saturday, March 15, the team went to Frenchtown for a qualifying tournament. Coach Charlie Crabb explained there were a number of tournaments going on in western Montana. The next one Superior will go to is in Thompson Falls on Saturday, March 22. If the kids place there, they will qualify for the Western Montana Championships is Kalispell.

“It’s kind of the Little Guy State Championship for western Montana,” Crabb said.

He estimated there are approximately 35 kids in the program this year. While a couple have quit since the season started, he felt the team is still pretty strong.

Crabb said there were approximately 25 to 30 kids at the Frenchtown Tournament. He said most of them placed and were tough wrestlers. As coach of the high school wrestling team, he felt the victories were promising for the team’s future.

Little Guy Wrestling includes kids from first grade to eighth grade. According to Crabb, the wrestlers are divided into different age groups before splitting into weight classes. As he described it, kids within the middle school weight class would only wrestler other middle schoolers in their weight class.

Crabb estimated there were 20 weight classes in the program, divided by approximately five-pound increments.

Bryan Mask, 100-pound class, took second place during the Frenchtown Tournament. Michael Parkin took third place and Hunter Haskins took fourth in the 75-pound class. Jake Calloway, 85-pound class, got third. Kyler Francis, 100-pound class, also took third place. Thad Haskins, 147-pound class, took first and Tim Galarneau, 140-pound class, got second.

According to Crabb, several other kids would be going to the tournament in Thompson Falls. While he could not remember everyone who placed, there were also a number of wrestlers who did not have matches and automatically went on to the next competition.

Most of the tournaments were round-robin style matches before the teams moved into bracketed tournaments in the qualifying rounds. Round-robin tournaments have the competitors wrestle everyone in the weight class once, regardless of whether they win or lose an individual match.

Crabb said the kids seemed to enjoy the matches and work very hard to wrestle at the best of their ability. He also said they take the competition seriously.

While they try to get the kids to win, the coaches do not emphasize winning and put the emphasis on getting better. Crabb said he focused on personal improvement and having the kids do the best they could rather than getting them to beat the competition.