Tiger wrestling team's season begins

The Mountain Home Tigers open their wrestling season tonight with a conference dual at Kuna against the Kavemen.

Tigers wrestling coach Lynn Knudson said the wrestling team had a good turnout this year.

"I feel really good about both our varsity and our JV squad," he said. "I think that, if everybody stays healthy, of course, like every year, I think we should be pushing for a good state finish."

The Tigers are coming off a fifth-place finish at state last year and return state champion Pierce Mederios and a number of others who placed at state.

"We ended up fifth overall, which wasn't too bad for a pretty young team," Coach Knudson said. "We're expecting a lot more this year. If we're not in the top two I'll be very disappointed. I'm going to set our goals high and shoot for the number one spot."

The 4A Southern Idaho Conference has dropped from nine to six teams this year, with perennial powerhouse Columbia and Nampa moving up to 5A and Emmett moving down to 3A, but it will still be a tough conference with the likes of perennial sate contender Kuna and Caldwell.

"Kuna will provide stiff competition there... along with Caldwell," he said. "We've just got to take it a match at a time and just take care of business like I think that we can."

Coach Knudson says that he hopes to have all the weights filled for their opener against Kuna today, Dec. 10.

"It looks like we're going to fill every weight," the coach said. "We have one of our wrestlers that was wrestling at 132 that's actually going to be at 126 and that's the weight class that we need to fill. Other than that, we do fill every weight class, but we're not deep in every one, so that's always a struggle every year."

Knudson's Tigers will be tested right off the bat with tonight's match at Kuna.

"We'll see what places we need to work on there for sure," he said.