Grace Duals

Wrestlers from all three local schools took part in the Grace duals last Saturday.  In addition to Grace, North Gem and Soda Springs, teams from Pocatello JV, Raft River, and Rich County were on hand to duel it out on the mats.  This dual was a team tournament meaning that each team would wrestle the others and the team with the most wins would win the tournament.  Several local wrestlers did very well in this meet with some suffering their only loss to other local wrestlers while others managed to go undefeated.

Soda Springs had the largest contingency of wrestlers of the local teams giving them the best matchup with Pocatello and Rich County who also have good numbers.  With wrestling being a combination of an individual and team sport the more wrestlers you have the better your chances of winning the team scoring.  That is as long as those wrestlers are spread out over all of the weight classes.  As Soda Springs took on Pocatello the Cardinals had a great showing.  A total of six Cardinal wrestlers won their match by fall with one winning by technical fall and three others winning by forfeit.  

Against Raft River only a handful of Cardinals had to wrestle to earn points.  Of the contested matches Soda Springs won three of the five.  The rest of the Cardinal team scoring came off of forfeits to the undermanned Trojans.

Rich County gave more of a challenge to the Cardinals.  There were eight contested matches for Soda Springs in this team dual.  The Cardinals split those eight matches with each team winning four.  After the forfeit points were tallied for each team Soda Springs once again came out on top but by a much slimmer margin.

Soda Springs 59 Pocatello 18     Soda Springs 53 Raft River 11     Soda Springs 43 Rich 30

120 Conner Lee 3-1, 126 Ryker Hemmert 3-1, 132 Owen Miller 1-3, 138 Dechlyn Belt 3-1, 144 Kage Johnson 2-2, 150 Kage Kirby 3-1, 157 Zayden Garbett 4-0, 165 Ashtin Call 3-1, 175 Carson Cook 2-2, 190 Elijah Dilworth 4-0, 215 Cole Garbett 4-0.

Due to their low numbers Grace and North Gem opted to combine teams to compete in this dual tournament.  Despite their low numbers the combined team was a force to be reckoned with.  Facing Pocatello every wrestler that competed won their match.

The combined team of Grizzlies and Cowboys continued to dominate when they took on the Trojans from Raft River.  Once again they only gave up forfeit points and won every match that was contested.

Facing the tough Rich County team the combined team gave up one match but still dominated the rest that were contested.  This gave the Cowboys/Grizzlies a 3-0 dual record with just one dual left to go.

NG/Grace 42 Pocatello 30       NG/Grace 36 Raft River 18     NG/Grace 36 Rich 18

126 Cael Newby 1-0, 126 Kade Kimball 3-0, 132 Carter Kimball 4-0, 138 Brett Hobbs 2-0, 138 Luke Rindlisbaker 2-0, 144 Jack Eddins 3-0, 144 Lukky Welker 2-0, 165 Haydn Frandsen 1-2, 175 Mack Jorgensen 3-0.

The final dual of the day was between Soda Springs and Grace/North Gem.  Each team had won all of their previous duals on the day so this was for the team championship.  The dual did not disappoint.  It was clear to all in attendance that the best wrestlers at the duals were from Caribou County.  Both of these teams were loaded with talent and each match between the schools was a pleasure to watch.  Soda Springs was able to earn four forfeits giving them an advantage.  This left seven matches that needed to be decided on the mat.  Every one of those matches was competitive and could have their results flipped on any given day.  However on this day the boys from North Gem and Grace came out on top winning six of those seven matches.  This resulted in a slim victory for the Grace/North Gem team over Soda Springs.  An additional impressive stat on the day was that not a single Grace wrestler lost a match throughout the day.  In the end it is sufficient to say that the rest of the state should take notice of the Caribou County wrestlers this season and fans should expect to see several of them at the state championships later in the season.

NG/Grace 36  Soda Springs 30