Northern Wyoming News - Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years

WORLAND - In preparation for the Battle in the Big Horns wrestling meet today and tomorrow the Worland Warriors went head to head against the Riverton Wolverines Thursday night at Warrior gymnasium and lost their first home dual of the season 46-30.

"Starting the dual it was a pin or get pinned deal. Our first three weights are all freshmen and we don't get to a senior until Buck Butterfield at 126, and I thought they did very well tonight. It's encouraging for us and our team and a good indicator of where we sit. We still have a few kids that are a little heavy and we haven't got them wrestling where they need to be. But it was real positive tonight and I thought out kids battled in every match," said coach Josh Garcia when summarizing the dual vs. Riverton.

As a team, Garcia is looking for his wrestlers to learn from the defeat as they ready for the Battle in the Big Horns this afternoon.

"As a team we'll build off this loss, learn from it and continue to get better. Riverton is a tough team, they've been in 4A for awhile and now they're coming down to 3A. We'll also look to take what we learned and quickly bring it into the meet this weekend. It's going to be a long and grueling two days and the kids are going to get a lot of matches and that's what we're really looking forward to," said coach Garcia.

Highlights for the Warriors include pins by 106-pound Domanic Hartley, 120-pound Daniel Weyrich, 126-pound Buck Butterfield, 145-pound Milo Vega and 160-pound Travis Takenhorst. The Warriors picked up all their points through pins.

In the previous week the Warriors traveled to Rapid City for the Rapid City Invitational. Butterfield finished in eighth place and was the only Warrior to place. Coach Garcia was still pleased with the team's effort and looks forward to keeping the Invitational on future schedules.

"It's a tough tournament. Opening your season with such a high caliber tournament is tough but we're not willing to change the schedule in the future because it's good for us to start wrestling against that high level of competition," Garcia said.

While weather might deter some schools from traveling for the Battle in the Big Horns, coach Garcia is looking forward to the opportunity of wrestling some of Wyoming's best programs from 4A to 2A.

"Hopefully we'll have the teams show up," said coach Garcia. "Either way we're going to do our best because there's going to be a lot of good competition with some of the top 4A schools here and quite a few 3A team as well as some tough 2A schools."

Coach Garcia also went on to explain why Battle in the Big Horns attracts so many schools. "The reason everyone comes to our competition is because it's a dual tournament and these kids will get in seven to eight matches before Christmas break. As opposed to a bracketed tournament, where if a kid went go 0-2 over the weekend then say they went 0-2 in the weekend before. They've only wrestled four matches. After our tournament a kid might have anywhere from 15 to 18 matches. So when you have all these schools coming to wrestle and adding to the level of competition it helps not only us but everyone involved get better as teams," he said.

The Battle in the Big Horns will begin today at 12:30 p.m. against Pinedale or Kelly Walsh and continue on Saturday as well. The parents of the WHS wrestlers will be serving dinner for $8 then Saturday morning serve breakfast for $5 with all proceeds going back to the Warriors wrestling program.