The Spanish Fork Dons wrestling team traveled to snowy West Jordan on Friday and Saturday to participate in the sixteen team West Jordan Dual Tournament and surprised the rest of the high school wrestling world by not only capturing the championship trophy, but barely breaking a sweat in doing so.

Despite competing with fifteen of the toughest teams from two states, the Dons were never intimidated as they rolled to six straight team victories on their way to the tournament crown.

In a grueling format that had the Dons wrestle two duals on Friday and four on Saturday, the Red and Gray showed surprising grit as they refused to show any loss of energy or spark right through the final match of the night. For those keeping score, the Dons beat in order, the Alta Hawks 47-16, the Bingham Miners 55-12, Taylorsville 57-6, Roy High 38-27, the Springville Red Devils 37-23 and in the championship match, the Box Elder Bees 42-21.

We are not talking about white knuckle wins here folks, we are talking about six good old fashioned whuppins. Oh, and by the way, we are also not talking about picking on a bunch of weakling first year schools here, we're talking about six of the most respected programs from the 4A and 5A ranks.

Box Elder, whom the Dons kicked in the championship finale are currently rank #1 in 4A, and Weber, who took third place is ranked #1 in the State 5A.

Going undefeated in all six matches for Spanish were Dave Sorensen at 152, Kyle Weight at 171 and Eric Kitchen at 189 pounds. With only one blemish were Nolan Haycock at 130, Tom Clark at 135, Rod Cox at 140, Bret Grover and Hadley Thorpe who shared the 145 pound weight class, Kade Christensen at 215 and heavyweight Brock Wilson. The remaining members of the championship roster for the Dons were Traven Gardner, 103, Ryan Pehrson at 112, Matt Anderson at 119, Kaleb Ashworth at 125 and Phil Sorensen at 160.

There were a number of heroes who wrestled spectacularly for the Dons throughout, and others who won key match-ups along the way, but if this writer were to pick an MVW for Clark's charges, it would easily go to Kade Christensen who wrestled at 215 pounds. The Dons wrestled the first month of the season without a 215 pounder when head coach Dave Clark finally got tired of forfeiting that weight at every match and sought out Kade to see if he might come out of retirement and plug that annoying hole in his line-up. Despite not having wrestled since the eighth grade, Kade took Clark's challenge and dusted off his sneakers and eased himself back onto the mat. After taking a few lumps in his first few outings, Christensen wedged himself into a real groove at West Jordan and won five of his six matches against extremely quality opponents, losing only to a ranked kid from Roy, but upsetting the second ranked 5A wrestler from Bingham with a phenomenal first round pin.

This win gives the Dons tremendous momentum and a giant boost in confidence as they look to finish out region wars and head into post season region and State finals and it couldn't come at a better time for the kids.

No doubt that those who consider themselves experts in the world of Utah wrestling will take notice of the Dons powerful performance at West Jordan, and maybe, just maybe give them at least passing respect as teams head into the home stretch of competition.

The Dons entertain North Sanpete at home before traveling to always tough Pleasant Grove on Thursday in Region IV action.