This past Saturday, Smithville sent 4 wrestlers to compete at the "Harrisonville Christmas Tournament", an event that the Warriors used to compete at on and annual basis.  For the past few years, the Warriors had replaced the Harrisonville tourney with the brutal KC Stampede event at Hale Arena.  This season, 4 Warriors who had missed the start of the season (due to the success of the football team) competed in the event to gain some valuable match time prior to the 2018 Stampede.  Mitchell Bohlken (138/145), Larry Barham (182), Brian Boyd (195), and Mason Crim (285) picked up several matches over the weekend.  Barham and Crim are newcomers to the program, and both competed well in tough brackets throughout the event.  4-year starters Bohlken and Boyd both ran through their brackets and made it to the finals, where Boyd picked up another tournament championship to add to his impressive resume.  In the finals, Brian (ranked #1 in class 3, 195 lbs) defeated the #2 overall ranked wrestler in Missouri by a score of 9-4.  It was easily the toughest match Brian has had yet this year, and he had to show some grit as his opponent continued to wrestle tough through all three periods.   Bohlken, who was wrestling at 145 lbs (he is moving to 138 pounds for the remainder of the season) took a 2-1 lead into the 3rd period of his match against conference foe Trent LeGrotte of Grain Valley.  The match went to overtime, where LeGrotte prevailed by a final score of 4-2.

The team will be back in action on Wednesday night, hosting an always tough Kearney squad, who is also now a conference foe!  Wrestling starts at 6:00 pm on Wednesday night... Come pack the gym and cheer on "the 'Ville" on Wednesday night!!