By Ryan Divish/Havre Daily News Sports Editor/rdivish@havredailynews.com
It's been a long two weeks of wrestling for the Havre High wrestling team. Because of the Ponies' success at the Mining City Duals in Butte and the Holiday Classic in Great Falls, there has been no shortage of matches for the Havre varsity.
Consequently, head coach Scott Filius is giving some of his varsity members an early break, even though the Ponies will be in action tonight at 6 with a home dual against the Lewistown Eagles.
"Some of our kids wrestled nine matches last weekend," Filius said. "We are going to mix up our lineup tonight and use some junior varsity kids against Lewistown."
Don't think for a second that Filius doesn't still expect the same dominating results against an undermanned Eagle squad.
"We still have the same expectations," Filius said. "It doesn't matter who we have out there."
To be honest, tonight's dual could very well be another Pony blowout.
Lewistown, coached by former Big Sandy standout Mike Mangold, has been hit hard by graduation, lack of numbers and injuries.
It sounds like Mangold will have to forfeit up to four weights and wrestle very young kids at several other weights, hence Filius' secondary reasoning for suiting up some younger wrestlers. Havre's JV teams scored more team points than Lewistown did in the Holiday Classic.
"Close matches with our JV wrestlers do us more good than lopsided matches from our varsity," he said. "Lewistown's numbers are down a little and they lost some good kids from last year."
Lewistown does return one very solid wrestler in Dustin Scotten at 145 pounds. Scotten was a state placer last season and will be a tough test for Adam Burrington at 145 pounds.
As of today, Filius wasn't quite sure about his whole lineup.
He was certain that Shane Boucher would move into the varsity lineup, while Beau LaSalle and Nate Harada will move up weights and wrestle heavier opponents.
"I really won't know too much till before the match and I see what they have," he said.
What Filius know is that getting a good performance is big with Havre heading into a break.
"We want to go into break with a win," he said. "We should be very dominant. We have a tough dual with Cut Bank when we get back from break, so we want to be sharp going into it."
