ARIMO — The dawn of wrestling season is just starting to break, and many coaches are still hammering out their rosters and depth charts.
That’s why competitions like the Marsh Valley Tournament are invaluable. The tournament, which took place Friday and Saturday at Marsh Valley High School, hosted hundreds of wrestlers from all over Southeast Idaho and Northern Utah. It’s a competition where wrestlers can put themselves up against individuals of all different styles and skill levels.
The Marsh Valley Tournament isn’t like most. Instead of brackets where wrestlers are seeded and placed, there are pods. Each pod consists of up to eight wrestlers who compete in a round-robin, round-by-round format. It gives teams and coaches the ability to gauge where they are in terms of strengths and weaknesses.
“The best thing about this tournament is kids are just going to continually wrestle,” said Pocatello head coach Todd Praska. “The No. 1 thing is in younger, inexperienced kids, they can continually work on something all those matches without really worrying about winning or losing — just worry about improving.”
And in Pocatello’s case, not much improvement is needed. Throughout both the varsity and junior varsity groupings, eight Indians went undefeated in their respective pods. Two varsity wrestlers, Hunter Roubidoux at 98 pounds and Kolby Smith at 113, emerged without a loss.
But it’s the little things, always the little things, that add up. And that is what Praska looks for when he’s trying to get his team to progress.
“When we’re on our feet we need to be in good position with our hands,” Praska said. “The bottom stuff, when we’re trying to get an escape reversal, we just need to keep moving and stay in good position.”
But things are different for Shelley head coach Dusty Skidmore and his Russets. In his second year, Skidmore has a young squad. With no seniors on the mat for Shelley, there’s a lot of learning to be had, and round-robin style tournaments like these are where that experience is built.
“It’s important to get a lot of matches this early in the season,” Skidmore said. “It shows you where you’re at with your competition. ... Teams that aren’t taking opportunities like this to get a lot of matches tend to fall behind in their conditioning, and then they get lost late in the season as a result.”
It’s a similar situation for Century. Two years removed from winning his second straight state championship at Marsh Valley, first year head coach Denny Humphries is hoping to turn around a Diamondback program that is still waiting to call one of its own a state champion.
“That’s what’s great about this tournament is we get guaranteed five, six, seven matches,” Humphries said. “We get a lot of mat time, and each individual gets a lot of work in. (They) get some wins, some losses and learn a lot from it.”
Highland junior Denver Dobson, who left the tournament with six wins and a loss, says the experience is vital to expand one’s horizons.
“It’s really good because you get to wrestle a lot of different kids that you wouldn’t normally wrestle,” he said. “You get a bunch more matches.”