Class AA state wrestling: Five Pack, One Brave in semis
BILLINGS — One Flathead and five Glacier wrestlers made it through to the semifinals of the Class AA state tournament at Rimrock Auto Arena Friday.
Flathead 160-pounder Jake Egley made it through the first two rounds with a 14-1 major decision and a 7-0 decision.
Seniors Lucas Mantel, 135, Kaleb Mitchell, 140, Grant Tafoya, 152, Jackson Barber, 160, and Dawson Day, 171, each advanced to the semifinals for defending state champion Glacier.
Glacier finished the day in eighth place with 83 team points while Flathead is 12th with 34.
Great Falls leads the team standings with 129 points.
“The first round did not feel like it went super well for us,” Glacier coach Mark Fischer said. “It just didn’t feel like a good round. It didn’t feel like a good round for Western AA in general. It seemed like the East came out and came to get it and they kind of embarrassed the whole Western AA.”
Tafoya avenged a divisional loss to Flathead’s Nick Iavicoli, winning a 7-3 decision in an all-Kalispell quarterfinal, and Mitchell gutted out a 7-3 decision that went down to the wire.
Mitchell led 3-2 after two periods, but allowed Billings Senior’s Tyler Cortez to escape his grasp after receiving a warning for stalling in the third. A stalemate with 30 seconds remaining gave Mitchell an opportunity to seize the lead, shooting on the restart and scoring a takedown and two back points at the buzzer.
“I was just trying to hold him down, get my bar in and pin him,” an exhausted Mitchell said after the match.
“He’s a pretty strong kid and he was able to get out, but then I was able to get my shot in.”
Mantel cruised through the first two rounds with pins in 31 seconds and 1:27. Day was nearly as dominant, pinning his first-round opponent in 49 seconds and winning a comfortable 11-4 decision in the second. Barber pinned his first-round opponent before escaping the second with a 4-3 decision.
“All five of them, they’re just wrestling really solid right now,” Fischer said. “I feel good about all of their chances.”
Ryder Day, 135, Tanner Stupack, 152, and Zach Dennehy, heavyweight, each won first-round matches before losing in the second.
Flathead coach Scot Davis said he was pleased with the first round when six Flathead wrestlers advanced, but the second was a nightmare. Iavicoli was an upset victim, Dyan Guzman, 105, lost a 5-2 decision, Gavyn Wilson, 112, got pinned, Tyler Davis, 130, lost a 9-5 decision and divisional champion Suny Cheff lost an 18-10 major decision in a match that was delayed 14 minutes by a power outage.
“This last round was the worst round of my coaching career,” Davis said.
“It seemed like anything that could go wrong, went wrong. The lights even went out.”
Cheff was tied 7-7 with Billings Skyview’s Joe Malchuski in the second period of their second-round match when a power surge caused the main arena lights to shut down. Cheff was outpointed 11-3 after the restart.
“You don’t want to make excuses, but it seemed like he had the upper hand (before the lights went out),” Davis said. “It really changes the tempo of the match.”
After watching five of his teammates go down in the second round, Egley said he’s was happy to advance.
“We definitely wanted someone to move on,” he said. “It’s really frustrating not having someone to cheer for in the finals.”
A first-period takedown gave Egley an early lead in his second-round match against Missoula Big Sky’s Jason Riekena. He scored an escape and a takedown in the second period to take a 5-0 lead and played it safe in the third period, eventually scoring a reversal to win 7-0.
“I had a pretty good lead after that second period, so I was just trying to play it safe and be careful the rest of the match,” Egley said.
“Just trying not to get thrown.”
The tournament resumes today at 9 a.m.