When Coeur d’Alene High wrestling coach Jeff Moffat started his journey into coaching within the Vikings program, it wasn’t pretty.

Nine seasons later, the program is a beautiful sight after Coeur d’Alene won its first state wrestling title in school history last weekend, placing 13 of 17 wrestlers and finishing 36 points ahead of runner-up

Highland of Pocatello.

“When I got here, this was one of the poorest wrestling programs in the state,” said Moffat, a Coeur d’Alene High grad and former Viking wrestler. “We practiced in the old auto shop classroom and practiced

on one mat that was old and grungy.”

After they remodeled the school’s athletic complex in 2006, the Vikings went from the shop room to one of the biggest practice areas in the state.

Numbers started to increase from 30 in Moffat’s final year as an assistant to 50 in his first year as head coach in 2001.

“We were the second-to-last team in the state the year before I became the head coach,” Moffat said. “Our numbers started to increase with coaches going out and recruiting kids from within the school. The kids started to buy into the philosophy and it kind of went from there.”

Moffat also started the Buzzsaw wrestling club, which is open to youth from Kindergarten all the way to 12th grade. The fall program is geared toward the younger athletes from youth to grade school, with the Greco-Roman and freestyle season in the spring for those middle

school to high school wrestlers.

“The spring session is the more high intensity of the two years,” Moffat said. “With most kids, success breeds more success. It’s a difficult sport to get kids out because you’ve got to watch your weight and it’s just you out there. It’s really a hard sport to sell kids on.”

This year’s championship team was among those first groups that wrestled when the program was getting going.

“We’ve had anywhere from 50 to 100 kids out for the program,” Moffat said. “It’s tough because you only keep a quarter of them throughout their career.”

With the freestyle program, Coeur d’Alene already has more than 10 wrestlers committed to compete in the spring.

“(A.J) Konda, (Steven) Price, (Johnny) Peregrina are just some of them that are coming in already,” Moffat said. “We had over 10 that came from the program on the team.”

Moffat added it’s the solid group of coaches and volunteers that have helped bring the Vikings to this point.

“If you don’t have the infrastructure, it won’t happen,” Moffat said. “There’s a lot of time involved and some people just don’t want to spend it. I’m more of a hands-on coach, so I want to take the time to get to know the kids.”

Coeur d’Alene has started to see some of the rewards of the Buzzsaw program in recent years, placing third in the 5A state tournament in 2005.

“Our success has started to grow over the years,” Moffat said.“We’ve been with the top teams the past couple of years. Those guys in ’05 were the ones that paved the way for this group.”

Coeur d’Alene also placed fourth in 2007 and was 20 points away from finishing in the top four in 2006, but missed out due to injury.

“We’ve been knocking at the door in recent years, but didn’t quite have the numbers,” Moffat said. “In 2006, we missed out on 20 points in that tournament because Braden (Mowry) was hurt. If he would have wrestled, he could have gotten us 20 points.”

Coeur d’Alene was also the top-ranked team in the 5A level throughout the season according to IdahoWrestlingNews.com.

“I don’t think the kids paid a lot of attention to that,” Moffat said. “If there was any pressure on them — the kids wrestled with a lot of confidence and it never seemed like there was any pres-sure on them throughout the year.”

Coeur d’Alene qualified 17 wrestlers to the state tournament, but knew that Highland qualified 22.

“When you get to the tournament, it’s one thing to qualify large num-bers,” Moffat said. “But you need to have quality wrestlers.”

Once they took the mat last Friday, each one of the 17 qualifiers had a role in bringing home the state title.

“Each guy contributed,” Moffat said. “Alex (Kastens) was our third-string guy at 215 and goes down and places. Our guys stepped it up big time. They fed off each other. It really could have snowballed either direction.”

Coeur d’Alene qualified eight wrestlers for the semifinals, with five of them advancing to the finals on Saturday night.

“Our kids learned a lot last year,” Moffat said. “Once we got through the semifinals, we knew that we’d done it.”

Despite going 0-5 in the finals, Coeur d’Alene knew it had done enough to wrap up its first state wres-tling title in school history.

“It was kind of a weird feeling,” said junior Kenny Staub, a runner-up at 130. “It was a good/bad feeling. It was nice to win a state title as a team — but losing as an individual didn’t feel good. We knew no matter what hap-pened in the finals, we had won.”

Junior Johnny Peregrina, who placed second at 160 pounds, added that the team’s strong start on Friday added to the team’s momentum on Saturday.

“As we were getting pins on Friday,” Peregrina said, “it kept the momentum going and helped get us off to a good start.”

“We were close last year, so it defi-nitely was good to win it this year,” said Staub, who placed fifth his previ-ous two trips to state.

Senior Kevin Moore, who hadn’t placed at state in his high school career, closed out his Viking career with a second-place finish at 171 pounds.

“It felt pretty good,” Moore said. “Everyone was doing well and we had a lot of pins on the first day to get us going.”

Moore missed out on placing at state his first two years, and then had his junior year cut short due to a torn LCL (lateral collateral ligament) last season.

“I wrestled a little bit last year, then got hurt,” Moore said. “I didn’t think we could be state champions. That’s what our goal was — to go undefeated and be state champions.”

“It felt pretty good to bring a state title to Cd’A,” said Peregrina, who has been competing within the Buzzsaw program since he was 10 years old. “I guess I learned just how strong I was.”

Peregrina added that he trains over 10 months out of the year for the sport, including the last seven years within the Buzzsaw program.

“Wrestling within the Greco/freestyle club helps,” Peregrina said. “I’ve done that each year and dedicate a lot of time to it. It was a really good season.”

The Vikings are already looking to next year, when seven of their 13 state placers return.“We’re going to be doing a lot of weightlifting in the coming weeks,” Moffat said.

“We’re going to be look-ing to develop some of the younger kids and put together a competitive lineup for next season.”