Impressive depth and strength in the lower and middle weight classes have emerged as the bread-and-butter of this year’s Plains/Hot Springs (PHS) wrestling team.

They continued their string of strong showings at the region’s top invitational events with that depth on full display this past Friday and Saturday during the Cut Bank Invitational event in the Glacier County town.

A total of 25 teams, many of them from Class A schools, attended this year’s meet, with the Havre Blue Ponies taking home top team honors by amassing 259 points. Second place in the team standings went to Conrad, which racked up 179 team points.

Plains/Hot Springs placed seventh in the team competition with 130 points, with the vast majority of their points generated by wrestlers in the 113-pound to 152-pound weight classifications.

Thompson Falls finished 13th in the team chase with 84 points, while Superior, the defending State C champs, was fourteenth with 81 points.

Hot Springs student John Waterbury led the PHS attack with a second place finished at 152 pounds. A state placer last year, Waterbury lost to Havre’s Reinhard Bold in the 152-pound title match, when Bold pinned him at the 3:37 mark. Waterbury is now 17-2 in matches this year.

The PHS co-op squad got third and fourth place showings in the 138-pound weight class when senior Drew Carey muscled out a pin over sophomore teammate Beau Crabb in 2:29. The win lifted Carey’s season mark to 20-3, while the loss dropped Crabb to 8-6 on the year.

The Horsemen wrestlers also got a fifth place medal from freshman Matthew Thurston, who pinned Conrad wrestler Gracin Jones in 30 seconds of their 113-pound match. Thurston is now 8-7 on the season.

Thompson Falls got a second-place finish at 182 pounds from defending state champ Max Hannum, who recently signed to play football at Montana Tech. Hannum lost a 6-1 decision to Lewistown senior Wyatt Elam in their title bout.

The loss left Hannum, a senior who is also playing varsity basketball for the Blue Hawks, with a 20-3 mark on the season. Elam moved his season mark to 5-0 with the win.

T Falls also got team points from eighth grader Weston Block, who pinned Havre’s Tucker Stygles at the 2:29 mark of their fifth place match at 103 pounds.

Superior, the area’s other wrestling school, continued to place well in the middle and upper weights, paced by heavyweight Jaxson Green, a senior who finished second in the 285-pound classification.

Green has been in the top two places in that division throughout the season.

Havre’s Tommy Lewis, a sophomore who is 4-0 on the year, pinned Green in 1:24 of their heavyweight title match to claim the title.

Green’s loss was just his second of the year, leaving him 12-2 for the 2023-24 season.

Superior 152-pounder Lucas Kovalsky won a third place medal for the Bobcats when he pinned Choteau’s Nathan Gunderson in 59 seconds of their consolation match, improving his record to 14-5 on the year.

The Bobcats also got another strong showing from freshman Turner Milender in the 160-pound class. Milender won a hard-fought 11-9 decision over Chinook’s Walter Schoen to capture third place and improve his season record to 15-2.

T Falls also had a trio of medal winners in the girls competition, with senior Desani Bewick placing second at 100 pounds following her loss to Kyra Anderson of CJI.

Lady Hawk Lexi volk was fourth at 100 pounds and teammate Veronica Vega placed sixth, also at 100 pounds.

Plains/Hot Springs and Thompson Falls will both travel to Choteau this coming Friday and Saturday (Jan 12-13) for the Choteau Classic. Superior heads to the Jug Beck Rocky Mountain Classic this coming weekend at Missoula Sentinel High.