Ponies experience growing pains in the Mining City

The Havre High wrestling team was in Butte over the weekend, taking part in the annual Mining City Duals. However, this year would have a different feel for the Blue Ponies, as their run of five consecutive team championships came to a close.

While the Ponies did finish the weekend on a positive note with a couple of wins Saturday, which pushed their overall record to 3-2, losses to Polson and Billings Senior Friday kept Havre out of the championship bracket and doomed their chances of repeating. Great Falls High ended up winning the team title.

“I thought it was a good weekend for us,” HHS head coach Beau LaSalle said. “I think that we figured out some things that we need to work on and that we need to fix. If we turn one match around, we change the outcome of those duals.”

In the group part of the competition Friday, Havre took on Billings Senior, Polson and Helena High. The Ponies won the match over Helena High with ease, 49-15, yet HHS lost 39-34 to Class A rival Polson and 30-27 to Billings Senior.

“I think one thing we learned in that in duals you just can’t give up pins,” LaSalle said. “In both of the duals that we lost, I think that we actually won more matches, we just gave up too many bonus points. So we have to be smart about that. In both, if we could have turned around one more match we probably would have won it.”

After getting knocked out of the championship bracket Saturday, the Ponies would settle for duals against Huntley Project and CMR. Against Huntley Project of Class B, the Ponies cruised to a 51-24 victory and followed that up with a solid performance against CMR that turned into a 43-24 win.

While the tournament didn’t go exactly as planned for the Ponies, Havre still got some good results from some of its top wrestlers. Over the course of the two days, five Havre wrestlers put together perfect 5-0 records for HHS at the Mining City Duals and those five were Mick Chagnon, Marc Ramirez, Martin Wilkie, Lane Paulson and Austin Ratliff.

“I think our main guys did what they were supposed to,” LaSalle said. “They got us bonus points when they needed to and they got pins when they needed to, so that was good to see. I think for some of our younger guys, it showed them what they need to do.”

The Ponies will have another busy week ahead of them as they will travel to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, this week for the Tri-State Wrestling Tournament, which starts Friday and runs through Saturday.

“It’s going to be a really good experience for us,” LaSalle said. “Anytime you get a chance to compete against some of those wrestlers and even just to watch some of those really elite guys, it can be a great learning experience.”