The Bulldogs soared in Paonia last Saturday.
Cole Baughman led the Dove Creek wrestling team to a third-place finish at the 19-team Screaming Eagle tournament.
Paonia High School hosted the event, as the Eagles won the tournament with 300 points. Fowler was second with 180 points and the Bulldogs tallied 157.
The kids didnt wrestle too bad. Paonia is loaded. They got tough kids in every single weight class. It showed, Dove Creek coach Shane Baughman said. A couple of the matches we lost, were to better kids. It wasnt bad. The kids wrestled pretty good. Weve been watching film the last couple days. They wrestled a lot better than what I thought when I was up there.
Cole Baughman went 4-0 at 120 pounds.
He looked good, Shane Baughman said about Cole. He beat a kid from Merino in the finals and that kid is ranked fourth in (2A) the state right now. He also beat a kid from Center whos ranked fifth in the state. He wrestled real well to go 4-0 on the day. Its not bad.
Tyler Ebberts and Nick Jones took second-place at 106 and 132 pounds with 3-1 records.
Chance and Dalton Randolph posted 4-1 marks at 113 and 138 pounds, which landed them in third-place.
Jared Galyean and Tyson Smith both came in fourth with 2-2 records at 220 pounds and heavyweight.
Dolores High School placed 11th with 67 points.
Bears coach Dean Valdez feels his team was a couple breaks away from finishing higher.
We would have finished in sixth-place, he said. We had a kid with too hard of a cross face, so you know how that goes on the mat. He got DQd (disqualified) and we lost all them points, so we ended up in 11th. We had an injury DQ with Logan Willbanks, so that cost us points there.
Wyatt Wade came in third at 126 pounds. Deano Valdez wrestled to fifth-place at 113 pounds. Wyatt Wallace and Richard Belt were sixth apiece at 160 and 220 pounds.
Overall, coach Valdez was impressed by the Screaming Eagle competition.
Thats probably the toughest field weve faced all around this year, he said. We put up a good fight. We got compliments from the coaches. We had some great moments up there. The disappointing moments were when we got intimidated by some of the kids there. Well have to work on that a little bit.
Dove Creek and Dolores will compete Saturday at the Ignacio High School tournament at 8 a.m.
