Tiger wrestlers fall to Wildcats

Mountain Home Tigers wrestling coach Coach Lynn Knudson went into last Thursday's dual match with Columbia knowing that the defending 4A state champion Wildcats would be tough.

But he was looking to use it as a test as to where his young, injury-laden team was and where they needed to be to be competitive at state.

Columbia dominated the match, winning all 14 matches, including four by forfeit, in a 72-0 win over Mountain Home.

"They're very tough," Coach Knudson said after the match. "They've got good numbers out and I'm not going to take anything away from them. I knew it would be a tough match coming into it, but we wanted to wrestle them.

"We kept the kids up all week about it, just to see where they're at... and where we need to get to," the coach added. "Obviously, we didn't win a match at the varsity level, but I thought we did good things and hopefully we can build off that, and that's just the name of the game."

Losing by decisions were Jaime Ibarra at 103 pounds (8-3), Erwin Ruiz at 152 (3-1) and Austin Lisonbee at 112 (9-7).

Ryan Goldsby lost a major decision (9-0) at 140 pounds. Justin Johnson lost by technical fall (16-0) at 160 pounds.

Losing by pins were Austin Lucas (119), Tyler Rios (135), Austin Clark (145), Sergio Guadarrama (171) and Jon Ryan (215).

The Tigers forfeited at 125, 130, 189 and 285 pounds.

The Tigers travel to Emmett Thursday night to close out their regular season schedule with a conference dual against the Huskies.

The District III 4A wrestling tourney runs from Feb. 17-18 at Kuna.