It’s early in the high school wrestling season.

And sure, it might be a little bit of a rush to judgment, but if nothing else, 5A Post Falls and 4A Lakeland might be just a few of the teams to keep an eye on if you venture down to the Tri-State Invitational for the championship finals a little later today.

WHEN THE teams faced off earlier this season, Post Falls showed its toughness, beating host Lakeland 57-17 in Rathdrum on Dec. 8.

The previous week, members of the Post Falls team jumped on an airplane, traveled to compete in the Sidney Invitational (Dec. 2-3) in eastern Montana — less than 10 miles from the North Dakota border — winning the duals portion of the event and finishing fifth in the bracketed tournament the following day.

“It’s a grind,” Post Falls coach Pete Reardon said of the tournament. “It’s nice to go early in the year and be tested to the max really. Because you’ve got three duals on Friday and an individual tournament on Saturday, and by the end of it all the travel. It’s a big trip and we didn’t get back until Sunday night at 9. All of that stuff combined really tests you early on. And it’s nice to be tested early, because we haven’t wrestled that much live except for practice. The quality of wrestling in eastern Montana and Wyoming, they’re really, really tough kids. And it’s kind of like a fist fight and they smack you around a little bit.”

Early on Friday, Post Falls led the 45th annual Tri-State Invitational — which the Trojans have won the past two years — with 76 points.

Not far behind was Lakeland High, which was third with 61.5 points midway through the first day. The Hawks tuned up for Tri-State by beating Lake City 66-12 and Coeur d’Alene 49-25 last Wednesday.

“They’ve got a good team,” Coeur d’Alene coach Jeff Moffat said of Lakeland. “I’ve got a lot of respect for that program and (coach) Rob Edelblute. They’re one of the better 4A teams in the state. We made them earn it and we saw a lot of positives from that match, but they put together a great lineup. Those coaches always do a great job.”

“They really handed it to us,” Lake City coach Corey Owen said. “That’s a good team they’ve got this year.”

Keep in mind, Lakeland — with most of the same kids back this year — finished as 4A runner-up at the state tournament in February.

As one coach described earlier this week, they don’t award the state medals in December.

They won’t this weekend, but it could be a really good indication of who’s in the running for them come that time in 2017.

WHILE MOST fans might still be adjusting their television sets to fix the color after watching the Seattle Seahawks on Thursday night — no those weren’t glow worms on the turf at CenturyLink Field — it was cool to see the team change things up a little bit.

With as much as some college teams change their look, one in particular that changes its jersey with weather it seems, it was nice to see the Seahawks change it up, if nothing else just for one night.

Then again, if they opted to stash them somewhere, much like the same color scheme they had a few years ago and never talk about it again, that’d be fine as well.

Jason Elliott is a sports writer for the Coeur d’Alene Press. He can be reached by telephone at (208) 664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via email at jelliott@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @JEPressSports.