Havre scores 239 points en route to a dominating Class A state championship
George Ferguson Havre Daily News sports editor gferguson@havredailynews.com
BILLINGS There were moments when things didn’t go exactly to plan. But by the time the championship round of the 2007 All-Class state wrestling tournament began Saturday night at the Billings Metra, it was exactly what everyone predicted it would be a celebration of the Havre Blue Ponies. The Ponies marched six wrestlers into Saturday night’s final round, winning four individual state championships and placing 11 wrestlers overall on their way to their first Class A state title since 2001. Havre scored an overwhelming 239 points, easily beating second-place Frenchtown, which scored 157.5 points. Polson finished third with 147.5 points. “This team really is a reflection of what our seniors started four years ago,” HHS head coach Scott Filius, who now has four Class A state titles, said. “They set the tone for this. These guys got pretty bloody when they were freshmen and had a pretty rough go of it. Then they got closer as sophomores and juniors. And I think we were better for having those tough times and running into a great team like Sidney the last couple of years. I think those tough times only made these kids work even harder to get to experience this.” The Ponies laid to rest any doubts of who the Class A champ would be by sending a record-tying 15 wrestlers into the second day of the tournament. Havre had eight semifinalists, and all but two reached the championship round. In the finals, Havre fans witnessed sophomore Chris Recio cap off a brilliant season by defeating Ronan’s Cameron Neiss 8-2 in the 98-pound final. Junior Ryan Shelstad and sophomore Myles Mazurkiewicz followed Recio with heartbreaking losses at 105 and 125 pounds, respectively. Shelstad lost a gutwrenching 1-0 decision to Frenchtown’s Chad Hansen. Last year, Hansen edged Shelstad by the same score in the 98-pound final. Meanwhile, Mazurkiewicz also couldn’t quite get over the hump against a familiar foe, as he lost to Lewistown freshman Ryan Martin, 4-1 in the 125-pound title bout. Martin beat Mazurkiewicz last week for the Central A championship. But as heartbreaking as both losses were, both Shelstad and Mazurkiewicz were two of the top-rated wrestlers in Montana in this season, and both had remarkable seasons. After Havre’s two near-misses at 105 and 125, senior Beau LaSalle got the Blue Pony championship train back on track with a gratifying 130-pound state championship. LaSalle had reached the Class A semifinals for three straight years, only to come up short each time. But in his last attempt, he wouldn’t be denied. LaSalle capped off his storied career at HHS with a 7-4 decision over Columbia Falls’ Cody Kolodejchuck on Saturday night. “It feels great. As the match was ending, I was just thinking about my teammates, my family, all the work. I really can’t believe this right now.” LaSalle said. “And to win the team title is icing on the cake.” And the Blue Pony party was nowhere near over with LaSalle’s win. At 189 pounds, Evan Hinebauch capped off a perfect season with a pinfall of Hamilton’s Brady Anderson to win his third consecutive Class A state title. And teammate Matt Schnittgen soon followed with his third straight state championship at heavyweight, and an undefeated season as well. “Winning state titles is great and it feels great again,” Hinebauch said. “But winning it as a team is so much better. It’s something you can share with your teammates, and I’m just glad I have such great teammates and I’m thankful to have such a great coaching staff to share this with.” All of Hinebauch’s teammates were a big part of Havre High’s most recent state title. The Ponies run to the championship started off a little bumpy as No. 1 seeds Logan Reichelt and Philip Sutherland were upset in the first round of the tournament. But Havre’s depth came into play, and in the end, placing 11 wrestlers was too much weight for the rest of the field to contend with. With eight wrestlers in the semifinals, Havre salted away the state title Saturday morning. Only senior Billy Wagner and sophomore Ethan Hinebauch fell short of reaching the final round. Wagner, who wound up placing sixth, was upset in the 135-pound semifinal by Anaconda’s Derek Sloan. Ahead on points midway through the match, Wagner got caught in an inescapable cradle and wound up getting pinned. The 135-pound class was regarded as one of the best in the Class A tournament, and Wagner’s loss was one of the many that touched his veteran head coach. “That’s what makes this a tournament like this bitter-sweet,” Filius said. “You have guys who invest everything in this sport and they don’t get the results they want, and it just crushes them. So even when you are so happy that you’re having all this success as a team in this tournament, every time one of your guys loses or doesn’t get to where they wanted to go, it just tears your guts out. It’s that way every time, and we had several of those situations this weekend. So it’s always a tournament of highs and lows no matter how well things are going.” Still, Wagner, who was a four-time participant in the state tournament, could take some satisfaction in the team title. “It’s sweet to win the state championship, because as seniors we’ve been a team for a long time,” he said. “And everything we’ve done as a team for four years has been about this moment.” Ethan Hinebauch, who also lost in a semifinal upset at 145 pounds, was one of several HHS wrestlers to come back through the losers’ bracket and score multiple points for HHS. Hinebauch rebounded to finish third at 145, giving him a second trip to the medal stand in as many years. The Ponies also got a stellar fifth-place finish by freshman Mitch Schnittgen in the heavyweight class. Like Hinebauch and Wagner, Schnittgen was upset earlier in the tournament, but battled back to score more points for his team. Aaron Olsen (145) and Curtis Shandorf (160) also scored well for Havre in the hardest way possible. Both grapplers lost their first-round matches, only to come all the way back and find their way onto the podium by tournament’s end, each finishing in sixth place. HHS also got points from Sutherland (152) , Reichelt (140), Brett Normandy (112) , Chris Buskirk (189) and Paul Jensen (215) . And at the end of the day, even with the early losses and some unmet expectations, HHS left little doubt about who was the premier power in Class A wrestling in 2006- 2007. “I don’t think the outcome was really ever in doubt,” Filius said. “We could actually have had at least two more kids, if not more, place. And even though we lost a few matches here and there, I knew all weekend long that we were too good, too deep, too tough and had too much heart to ever let this one get away from us. And that’s a credit to all of these kids. This is without a doubt one of the hardest-working group of kids I have ever been around, and we knew that our time would come. We all knew that all of that work was going to pay off, and I think we did a pretty good job of making it pay off this weekend.”
