SUPERIOR – In the first tournament of the season, the Superior Bobcats wrestling team members all took second or third in their weight categories at the Polson Tournament.

The team was incredibly strong on the mat. According to updates posted on the Superior High Booster Club Facebook page, Anthony Parkin pinned his first opponent in five seconds.

Anthony and Blaine Parkin both wrestled well and took some of their opponents down in less than a minute. While Bridger Lapierre took longer to down his opponents, he still had a good series of matches. In his first match, Lapierre downed his opponent in just shy of six minutes. A time he cut in half for his second match.

The tournament’s final standing saw Blaine in third place for his weight category, Anthony and Lapierre both received second place for theirs. Head Coach Charlie Crabb was proud of the boy’s results. He said it was a tough tournament and had strong competition.

Lapierre had a full bracket of 16 opponents in his weight class while Anthony had 12 and Blaine had five. Crabb said the matches were fairly standard and did not have anything too unusual happen.

“They won the matches they should have won,” said Crabb.

Crabb was happy with the team’s performance. However, the size of Superior’s team could prove to be a disadvantage later on.

The Bobcats wrestling team only has four competitors on it. For the tournament, the fourth member of the team was out due to a broken ankle. Crabb said Tate Trudeau would be unavailable for games while he healed. The smaller team may have some impact on how certain matches go.

To participate in duals will require approximately three or four other teams be brought in to combine into one for a mixer. Crabb said there were several small teams this year and some of them could join together to do group matches.

The tournament was a good way for the team to evaluate itself against other teams. According to Crabb, the Bobcats did very well and in some ways played better than the bigger teams.

“Team wise, we played harder than teams with eight [to] 11 kids,” said Crabb. “This is a tough tournament for the beginning of the year, so we did really well.”

With only three practice sessions before the next tournament, there is not a lot of time to get better and the team will have to get as much into the time as possible. Leading up to next week’s matches, the team will polish up a few items. In terms of technique, the team is in good shape with only a handful of things to work on and improve.

“We’ll be kind of breaking down what we did and technical work,” said Crabb. “Other than that, just business as usual.”

This Saturday will be the Superior Invitational Tournament where approximately 12 teams from around the area will come to participate. Three mats will be set up in the Superior High School gym and teams will constantly compete on them. The tournament will start Saturday morning and go all day.