Dec. 3, 2006: The Salt Lake Tribune

Wrestling: Wasatch Comes Out On Top
by Jay Drew

LAYTON — The first major high school wrestling tournament of the season concluded Saturday night, and this much we know: Class 3-A's Wasatch is still king of the mat, the 140-pound division is going to be tough as nails and three-time defending 5-A champion Viewmont is more capable of adding a fourth title than people think.

The Wasps won the Layton Invitational for the second straight year, racking up 217.5 points and getting solo championships from Casey Smith at 130, Jake Salazar at 145 and Ethan Smith at 160. But the surprise came from Viewmont, which placed second with 199.5 points.

Despite their three consecutive 5-A championships, the Vikings were unranked in 5-A when The Tribune released its first rankings of the season Friday.

"I'm encouraged," said coach Bart Thompson.

Nate Larsen at 112 pounds was Viewmont's only individual champion, but Thompson said his squad is "tougher throughout the whole lineup" than it was last year, when it had three state champions.

As for Wasatch, new coach Steve Sanderson was also pleased, for the most part, with what he saw, after taking over the program again just this fall when former coach Ben VomBaur left for a job at Wyoming.

"It was a good eye-opener for me," he said. "I've got a double-list of things we need to go back and work on."

Wasatch beat Viewmont 46-27 on Thursday in a dual meet at Heber City.

The match of the night came at 140, where Springville's two-time state champion, Jason Chamberlain, met Davis' three-time state champion, Sean Porter. A junior, Chamberlain scored a takedown in the second period against the senior and eked out a 2-1 win.

"I was kind of excited to show how good I can be, and the only way you do that is to go against the best," Chamberlain said.

Having won his state title at 125 last year, Chamberlain said he will wrestle at 140 most of this year "for the good of the team," but might drop to 135 for some big tournaments, including the Reno Tournament of Champions, the event where he picked up the only blemish on last year's 50-1 record.

In the semifinals, Porter defeated Brighton's Ky Lucero, a state runner-up in 2006, while Chamberlain defeated Wasatch's Shane Bonner, a state champion last year.

Brighton's Cole Shafer was the Most Outstanding Wrestler in the upper weights, while Chamberlain was the MOW in the lower weights.

Shafer downed Box Elder's defending state champ Riley Yeates at 171, but only after getting a point to tie the match 5-5 when Yeates was penalized for an illegal hold. A few seconds later, and just before the final horn, Shafer got an escape to get the win.

"He scissored my head, which gave me a point, and then I escaped with a Granby [move]," he said. "I just had a lot of energy, all the way through."

Other individual champions were Roy's Tucker Ray (103), Springville's Kolby Bradley (119), Bingham's Riley Adamson (125), Cyprus' Matt Brown (135), Mountain Crest's Ethen Lofthouse (152), Layton's Adam Fager (189), Box Elder's Riggin Holmgren (285) and Alex Kovis (215) of Battle Mountain, Nev.