SHOSHONI – This past weekend, the Big Piney Punchers were in Shoshoni for a dual on Friday, Jan. 5, and a dual tournament on Saturday, Jan. 6. The Punchers went 6-0 in their duals, winning the Shoshoni Invitational.

Friday night we started off wrestling Shoshoni and got off to a hot start. Charlie Smith was the first match of the night and boy, did she get us off to a great start. Charlie’s intense pace and attacking style of wrestling really set the tone for both the boys and girls.
After the match, we got into the varsity duals and this time David Farrington got the ball rolling with a well-controlled win over a returning state placer and ranked wrestler. That was a huge win and a great way to start the dual. Dominic Sanchez also defeated a returning state placer and ranked wrestler. It was a great start to the week with the Punchers winning the dual, 57-18.

On Saturday, we started off the duals against Saratoga. Again the pace of action and aggressive style paid off for the team, where we won the dual, 58-18. It was an impressive way to start off the day and get the momentum going.
Our next opponent was the Worland JV team and again we controlled the pace and won the dual, 60-18. The third dual of the day was against Wyoming Indian and again we had a great dual winning, 60-12. That led us into the final dual of the pools and this was for first place in the pool. 

We wrestled against Lovell and once again we started off on an amazing start, rolling off big wins to start the dual and finish up winning the dual, 48-36. I was really impressed with each and every match in that dual. That put us in the championship dual versus the Greybull wrestlers, who won the other pool.  There were a lot of great matches in this dual and we got some big victories and even in our defeats we wrestled very well and competed to our best.

We ended up winning the dual, 50-22. That improved our dual record for the year to 6-0.

It is alway a challenge when coming off of break to see where your team is and how they will bounce back from a break. But I was impressed with how well our team came back from break and competed. Again we spent a lot of time working on our feet and this week we had almost  100 more takedowns than we gave up. When you have a stat like that, it shows how well the boys and girls wrestled all week. I also really like how much better we were at controlling our opponent when we took them down. We gave up very few escapes or reversals and won most of our matches by fall. 

Key wrestlers to highlight this week are first, Kaydence Guest, as she earned her first win of the season. The look of joy and excitement on her face was priceless. I was pleased with how hard she worked in her matches and you could see her using the skills that we work on each day.

It was also great to see Zephyr Arterbury get his first win as well. I love how hard he fought in each of his matches. Never giving up – and twice he was able to come from behind and get a fall for the win.

I was also very impressed with the wrestling of Jerrett Fear. He has been out with illness and this week he looked very strong in each of his matches. I loved how he competed and he is moving in a positive direction and we look for a lot from him. We also had several go undefeated this week. Dominic Sanchez continues to roll off victories; Zavier Clifford, David Farrington, Caden Clifford, Charlie Smith, Roger Young and Zach Murphy all were unbeaten on the weekend.

This week we will travel to the Don Runner Tournament in Wind River. We are excited to see several teams from the east as well as a lot of teams from our conference at this tournament. This will give us a great look at where we possibly stand in our conference.

We are going to work on cleaning up things that we need to improve on as well and implement holds and counters from what we saw other teams doing this week.