The Battle Mountain Junior High wrestlers kicked off its season Saturday, Feb. 29, with its first tournament of the year in Lovelock.
After beginning practice nearly three weeks ago, the team was eager for their first chance of competitive action against the other schools in the Tah-Neva tournament circuit.
With a healthy mix of returning veterans and some fresh faces tasting their first competitive action, the grapplers ended the tournament with a strong showing and the bus rolled out of Pershing County with 13 wrestlers placing in the top four of their weight brackets.
“It’s always fun to go out and test your mettle against an opponent after spending the first few weeks wrestling against fellow teammates. Whether it’s your first year on the mat, or you’ve been wrestling your whole life, the first tournament is always accompanied with some nerves,” said first year head coach Tucker Vezina.
“The only way to get through the nervousness is to get on the mat, shake hands and wrestle, and I think we did a pretty good job of that on Saturday. We have a lot to improve on, but we found out where we are and what we need to do to improve next week.”
At the end of the day, Jacob Perrone, Jagger Whitlock and Cruz Jimenez all won their championship matches and finished in first place for the ‘Horns.
Kobee Nelson and Nathan Khan battled hard in the finals and came away with silver medals.
Aiden Wiley, Kael Bengoa, Alex Wall and Wiatt Kelley finished with a victory in their last match of the day to take home a third-place finish and a bronze medal.
Caden Fagg, Omar Gutierrez, Andy Wall and Grace Huhta all finished in fourth place to round out the placing for the Shorthorns. “Heading into the first tournament and coming away a lot of placers is always a promising sign, but now we know exactly what we need to do to get better," added the coach. "We’ll take this week to make those improvements, and hopefully bring home some more hardware next weekend.” .
Also wrestling in the tournament were Zane Fetterly, Romeo Tijerina, Ty Herald, Jade Scherer, Haleigh Peterson and Jenny Harvey.
“They were just out of placing, but we saw some promising things from them and they will look to improve on their final standings this upcoming weekend at the tournament in Fernley,” concluded Vezina.
