Tigers celebrate after conference wrestling victory

The Mountain Home Tigers celebrated Senior Night with a 46-28 conference dual match win over Middleton last Wednesday night in Lloyd Schiller Gymnasium.

The Tigers won nine of the 14 matches, three by pins and three by forfeit.

Tim Hazelbaker (189 pounds), Joe Gutierrez (112) and DeVonte McClain (119) won by pins.

Perry Savage (152), Gage Curtis (160) and Ty McRae (285) collected forfeits.

Erwin Ruiz (135) won a 13-5 major decision, Kevin Anderson (171) won a 9-7 decision and Cory Pinque (130) won a 6-5 decision.

Zach Pomerantz (140) and Austin Lucas (103) lost by technical fall and Austin Clark (145), Stephen Lemmon (215) and Tyler Rios (125) lost by pins.

Tiger wrestling coach Lynn Knudson was happy to get the win.

"It's always nice to have a win. It may not have been the best looking match ever, but our guys are going through this flu that's really kicking our butts. If we get over this, I think we'll be OK.

"At least it's happening now, so maybe come districts we don't have to worry about this flu and everybody's healthy again, but you can sure tell that we're not 100 percent."

The Tigers wrestled at the Halverson Invitational at Minico over the weekend, finishing 15th out of 21 teams competing.

Highland ran away with the tourney, with 248 points. Pocatello was a distant second with 126 points, a point ahead of Jerome and three points ahead of Borah. Mountain Home finished 15th with 54.5 points.

DeVonte McClain finished fourth in the 119-pound weight class, Cory Pinque finished fifth at 125 pounds and Joe Gutierrez was sixth at 112 pounds.

"I was pretty happy with how we placed at the Halverson," said Coach Knudson. "We only took eight wrestlers down, and that was because of the flu bug that's hit us, and I think some that we took were still bothered by the flu."

Tigers JV place 7th at Burley tourney

The Tigers JV matmen wrestled at a junior varsity tournament at Burley over the weekend and finished seventh.

Highland won the Burley tourney and Mountain Home came in seventh among the 24 teams that competed there.

Tyler Rios had a second place effort at 125 pounds.

Austin Clark (140 pounds), Perry Savage (145) and Sergio Guadarrama (171) all had fourth-place efforts at the tourney.

The Tigers wrestle a conference dual at Bishop Kelly on Thursday night and the Tiger JV will go to Glenns Ferry Thursday night to wrestle the Pilots and Gooding.