PREP WRESTLING: Blaine gives Sedro a scare

Borderites finish second; 12 local wrestlers finish first

JOE SUNNEN

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SEDRO-WOOLLEY — The Blaine wrestling team spent the regular season serving notice that despite their youth they are a squad to be reckoned with.

At the Northwest Conference Tournament on Saturday, they also showed they might be closing the gap on perennial power Sedro-Woolley.

The Borderites finished with two conference champions and four second-place finishers to score 217.5 points and finish second at the Northwest Conference Tournament, giving the Cubs a scare in the process. Sedro-Woolley finished with 246.5 points. Mount Vernon was third with 169 points.

PREP WRESTLING: Blaine gives Sedro a scare

Blaine sent six wrestlers to the finals and placed 11 in the top five. It was a fitting way to wrap up a regular season that saw Blaine go undefeated in dual meets.

“We didn’t quite finish a couple of the matches the way we had hoped in the finals, but it was a pretty good tournament,”

Blaine coach Craig Foster said.

Blaine’s Shane Hicks and Jacob Humphrey claimed the Borderites’ titles, with Hicks taking the 215-pound division and Humphrey winning at 119-pounds. The two helped Whatcom County wrestlers to six individual titles on the boys’ side. Bellingham’s Michael Takemura and Riley Mullett each won a championship, as did Lynden’s Niels Brisbane and Ferndale’s Tristan Greig.

“I think the biggest thing we get out of this is confidence,” Hicks said. “It’s something we can take with us going into sub-regional next week.”

While the main thing at stake for most of the wrestlers was bragging rights at the multi-classification tournament, several of the matches did have a bearing on the postseason. Quite a few of the matches will help determine seeding at next week’s subregional tournaments.

“I’m hoping this can help me get a top seed into the sub-regional,” Greig said after winning the 152-pound title. “I think this is the best I have wrestled in my entire life.”

The Mount Baker girls’ team continued its dominance of the Northwest Conference, taking home the team title as well as five individual titles. The Mountaineers won the final five weight classes after sending 10 wrestlers to the finals to score 182 points.

The match of the tournament might have belonged to Ferndale’s JJ Reiser and Sedro-Woolley’s Shane Hunt. The two state placers wrestled to a 2-2 tie through two rounds before Hunt scored a late takedown. The match drew cheers and brought fans to their feet in solute as the two left the mat.