Wrestling team young, still has experience

This year’s Bulldog wrestling team is a young one.

Led by lone senior Aalec Pace, new to the team, the team has been practicing since Nov. 16 in preparation for the Polson Invitational this Friday and Saturday in Polson.

Head coach Ryan Boyle said right now, the focus has been on fine-tuning the basics.

“With only one senior, we have a young team, but everyone on the team except for a few have come through some sort of wrestling program,” Boyle said. “Everybody has wrestling experience, basically we’re trying to simplify everything and get good at three or four things and work on things that way.”

Already the Bulldogs have a wrestler at every weight except 182 and 205, an improvement from last year, where inconsistent gaps at different weights plagued the team in duals.

While the team is young, Boyle said he’s enthusiastic about what some of his returning wrestlers can bring to the table.

“I’m pretty excited, honestly. It’s not like we have a state placer on the team coming back or anything like that, but a big handful of kids went to state last year were right in there.”

The Bulldogs also held their annual Green and Gold scrimmage Tuesday after presstime.

They’ll host two invitationals this season, the first being the Dec. 8 Triangular with Browning and Bigfork, and the second on Jan. 26, which will be the Bulldog Wrestling Invitational.