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HHS opens the wrestling season with a Havre Invite championship
Havre High's Parker Filius, right, works the head of a Great Falls High rival during Saturday's Havre Invitational at the HHS gymnasium. Filius was one of six Blue Ponies to claim an individual title at the tournament.
Havre's Ryan Stewart, left, battles a GFH rival in the 113-pound championship match at Saturday's Havre Invitational. Stewart won the match, 7-1.
HHS's Jase Stokes, right, battles with Chinook's Jess Dannels in the 182-pound Havre Invite title match Saturday.
Havre senior Travis Adams, right, holds on to teammate Jared Sienkowski during a heavyweight semifinal in Saturday's Havre Invite.
HHS's Tyler Schaub goes for a pin during the 2015 Havre Invite. Schaub captured the 205-pound title.
Havre High's Kody Pribyl, right, battles with a CMR grappler during a 138-pound title match at Saturday's Havre Invite in the HHS gymnasium.
Havre's Martin Wilkie pins a Browning rival during Friday's Havre Invite. Wilkie won the 120-pound title on Saturday.
Havre senior Logan Pleninger faces off during Friday's Havre Invite. Pleninger wound up second at 132 pounds.
Havre heavyweights Jared Sienkowski, right, and John Berg meet up in Saturday's Havre Invitational at the HHS gymnasium.
The Havre Wrestling Invitational has become the traditional starting point for the winter sports season along the Hi-Line and this past Saturday, it was held again at the HHS gymnasium.
And once again the Blue Ponies dominated it.
The Ponies did get a slight push from defending Class AA state champion Great Falls High, but at the end of the day, thanks in large part to six individual champions and a number of others placing highly, HHS captured the team crown with 284.5 points. The Bison were a relatively close second with 249, while CMR was third with 139.5. Browning and Lewistown were fourth and fifth with 130 and 107 points, respectively.
"You have to start somewhere," HHS head coach Scott Filius said. "The first weekend is a mixed bag, but it's always like that. Now we know what we need to work on, so it's fun."
The two-day meet, which began Friday, came to a close Saturday and when the finals came around, it seemed like just about every championship match featured a Havre wrestler. In all, the Ponies qualified nine wrestlers for the finals and finished with 13 wrestlers in the top five.
As expected, Havre got great performances from all three of its individual state champions. Parker Filius took home first place at 152 pounds thanks to an exciting 7-0 decision over Jordan Kormac of Great Falls High, while Jase Stokes pinned Jesse Dannels of Chinook in 1:47 to take the title at 182. Travis Adams won by way of a 6-2 decision over Noah Danielson of CMR and Tyler Schaub also took home the championship at 205 pounds after defeating Nick Nordell of CMR.
"It's a fun weekend, but honestly this isn't really a high point for us," Parker Filius said. "It's a nice first weekend but we aren't really building towards this tournament, we are building towards the end of the year."
The other individual champions from Havre in the meet were Ryan Stewart, who won at 113 pounds thanks to a 7-1 decision over Braeden Lomas of Great Falls High and Martin Wilkie, who took home the title at 120 pounds with a pin of Bridger Grover of Lewistown in 51 seconds.
The three wrestlers who made it to the finals but ended up finishing second were Logan Pleninger at 132 pounds, who was pinned by Malta's Trey Simanton in 39 seconds, Koby Pribyl at 138 pounds, who lost a 5-4 decision to CMR's Kai Stewart, and Dane Flammond at 160 pounds, who lost a 3-0 decision to Tommy McMillen of Great Falls High.
"We made some mistakes yesterday (Friday) and today (Saturday) but that's alright," coach Filius said. "We turned some of those things around, and you kind of need to wrestle your way into shape and that's kind of where we're at. I feel like we were aggressive. I thought we had a good tempo and I like that."
The other wrestlers who managed to place in the meet for the Ponies Saturday were Lane Paulson, who finished third at 120 pounds, Jazz Schroeder, who earned a third-place finish at 145 pounds and Walter White, who was fifth at 170 pounds.
Jared Sienkowski managed to finish fifth in the heavyweight division thanks to a victory over Brock Smith of Havre, who finished sixth. Kollin Nystrom also finished seventh at 145 pounds for HHS, while Jarred Laux was seventh at 160 pounds.
All in all, it was a good performance from the Ponies, who got some standout performances from their veterans, while also seeing some promising signs from the many youngsters on the team.
"We had a lot of young kids do really well," Filius said. "Lane Paulson and Kollin Nystrom, two freshmen, both had great weekends for us and I was really pleased with both of them."
Filius said he appreciated the competition that was presented by Class AA schools such as Great Falls High and CMR, as well as from Class B schools like Malta and Cut Bank and Chinook, the defending Class C state champion.
"Anytime you wrestle some better competition, you find out if your kids have a little grit in them," Filius said. "Sometimes they expose you a little bit and you have some things to work on and sometimes it exposes that you have some pretty good character."
The Ponies will be back in action Friday and Saturday at the Mining City Duals.
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