Hartley and Weyrich the only Warriors to place at Ron Thon

WORLAND — The Ron Thon wrestling tournament is Wyoming’s largest regular-season tournament, nearly every wrestling program in the state made their way to Riverton on Friday and Saturday to compete. The tournament offers bragging rights to the best wrestlers in the state in each weight class, regardless of school classification.

For the Worland Warriors, it was a hard fought two days in Riverton as they only had two wrestlers place in the highly competitive tournament.

“It’s definitely a tournament of the best of the best,” said WHS wrestling coach Josh Garcia. “There are 42 teams, there are some 780 wrestlers there, it’s a tough tournament and in some weight classes, there were running a 64-man bracket. To go into a tournament that size, it can be intimidating but I thought our kids wrestled well. We got down on ourselves at times but I think we can learn from that and try to get better.”

Added Garcia, “We had a lot of close matches and I know from the outside looking in it might not look like we did well, but I’m proud of our guys. It’s a very tough tournament and you see state champions lose all the time there. Donny Prophet a senior [from Kemmerer High School] and three-time state champion lost to a sophomore.”

Juniors Domanic Hartley and Daniel Weyrich were the only Warriors to reach the podium. Hartley took sixth in the 113-pound weight class and Weyrich was fifth in the 132-pound weight class. The two juniors accounted for 28 of Worland’s 41 points during the tournament

Weyrich’s path to a fifth-place finish started with a first-round bye. In round 2 he lost to Kale Corley of Newcastle/Upton by a 5-4 decision. Battling in the consolation bracket, Weyrich won his next four matches defeating Pake Haun of Torrington by pin, Jordan Schneider of Evanston by pin, Jacob Weipert of Green River by 5-2 decision and Kendell Cummings of Evanston by 2-0 decision.

In the consolation semifinals, Weyrich lost to Natrona County High School’s Cyrus Meeks by a 12-4 major decision. But in the fifth-place match, he bounced back with a 6-5 decision win over Lander’s Nathan Redman.

Hartley received a first-round bye to start the Ron Thon, in round 2 he pinned Star Valley’s Winston Green; in the quarterfinals, he lost to Pinedale’s Cody Phelps by 8-1 decision. Now in the consolation bracket, he pinned Thermopolis’ Austin Ireland in round four and Tim Henry of Rock Springs in round five.

In the consolation semifinals, Billy Brenton of Natrona County High School won by a 14-9 decision sending Hartley to the fifth-place match. Matching up against Star Valley’s Winston Green again, Green got the better of Hartley the second time around defeating him by way of pin.

The Warriors would have liked to come home with more placers but Garcia believes this is going to add to his team’s motivation. Before the Ron Thon the Warriors were trending up and looking like one of 3As top three teams and now – while they’re still among 3As more talented teams – they know there’s still plenty of work to be done.

“I always worry about doing well at tournaments like that because then the kids will be like ‘Well there’s nothing for me to work on the next three weeks,’” said Garcia. “The kids know who they have to beat, so to speak. They know the expectation and it’s do or die time. We need to be on the upside of those close matches.”

Several Warriors were on the wrong end of a close match in Riverton and it’s why during this week’s practice, the focus is going to be on getting the first takedown of the match. Garcia and his staff will setup high-pressure scenarios in practice, in which the Warrior wrestlers will have to get a takedown or score some points. And as some extra incentive to complete the scenarios, conditioning drills await those who can’t hit the goals.

“With those close matches, No. 1 we have to get that first takedown. We’ve been getting taken down or getting turned and find ourselves down 4-0 going into the second or third period. I want to see us get that first takedown and get that near fall, then we’d be the one going into the third period up 3-1 or 4-0.

“We’re going to work on that this week too. We’re going to work at getting those takedowns and putting them in situations where you have 10 seconds and you have to score. If you don’t there’s going to be some Lombardi’s and burpees as a result,” said Garcia.

The Warriors have one competition this week a home dual against 2A Greybull-Riverside at Worland High School at 6:30 p.m. With the Greybull-Riverside program in a rebuild, Garcia plans to give some of his older wrestlers the night off and bring up several JV wrestlers to the varsity.

“This will be kind of a different deal, I’m going to sit some of our older kids. Greybull is down a little bit and I never really want to run up the score. So we’re going to wrestle our younger kids and it’s still going to be a good dual,” said Garcia.