BIG PINEY – After three filled and challenging weeks it was good to have a full week of practice and only one day of competition.

This allowed the Big Piney team to get healed up during the week. We have been fighting injuries and illness and this week we had the time to heal up. The Punchers wrestled in Jackson at the Bridgerland Invitational. This was a smaller meet with eight teams in attendance.

The Punchers ended up taking first place. It was a great performance for our team. We did a great job of competing and wrestling to our best in each and every match. I really liked how well we wrestled on our feet this week. We were heavy in our ties, which helped us to chain attacks and earn takedowns at a high rate this week. We had 28 more takedowns than our opponents this week. That is huge for us and we spend a lot of time working on those first points in the match.  I also felt that we did a better job of breaking opponents down and chaining pinning combinations together. The key is to keep working and not stop in our matches. I feel that we still need to improve out wrestling from the bottom. We will continue to work these skills leading into the final week of regular season.

We had several champions this week in Jackson. Junior Caleb Brown had another outstanding week of wrestling placing first. Junior Dominic Sanchez had a strong performance this week in winning his bracket. Senior Jackie Meador also had a strong week, winning his bracket.

That gave us three champions in the lowest three weights. It is a very strong group and they always get us off to a solid start to our meets. Freshman Zavier Clifford placed second, sophomore Nate Brown was third, senior Jarrett Fear coming back from illness looked great placing fourth. Junior Caden Clifford was third. Seniors David Farrington placed second and Roger Young fourth; senior Zach Murphy was second and sophomore Zef Zuniga was third.

For the girls, freshman Kristine Young really showed huge improvement this week in her physicality on the mat. She and junior Charleigh Smith were champions of their brackets as well.

I was really impressed with our performance over our entire lineup and the improvement we showed this week. We hope that it will continue into a busy week to end the season for us.

We will wrestle in Kemmerer at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 8, going up against the returning state champions.

Then we will head to Saratoga for the Carbon County Invitational on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 9-10.  This will help us get ready for State in that State is also a three-day tournament and weigh-in. This will definitely help prepare us for that by having to make weight three days in a row. 

Carbon is the meet we target each year to be wrestling our best and we are tending in that direction with our performance over the last month. It will also allow us to see teams from the east side of the state. That will be important for us, to get scouting on opponents we do not see very often.