The Bengals’ wrestling season kicked off in November, and since then, the team has gone to a couple of tournaments and a few duels.
At the Tri-State tournament, the boys varsity team took two top-three spots, with Hoyt Hvass (11) in third place and Robert Storm (12) in second place. In Kellogg, Joely Slyter (10) and Cassidy Rehder (12) both took first, putting Lewiston third in the women’s bracket. In Kellogg, Lewiston JV boys got 12th overall. This season Lewiston introduced a new head coach for the wrestling program: Colton Maddy. This is Maddy’s first year coaching for Lewiston, but not his first year as a wrestling coach.
“We are about halfway through my first season here at LHS and I’m loving every second of it,” Maddy said. “As a whole, the team listens well and is buying into the stuff the new coaching staff is giving them. We have a fun group of athletes on the team who work hard and are hungry to win.”
This year, several LHS girls have joined wrestling teams, and they have lots to say about it.
“It’s nice having more girls to hang out with,” said sophomore Joley Slyter.
“I prefer wrestling girls to boys. I don’t think it’s unfair wrestling boys right now, but at some point, it will be,” Slyter added.
She hopes that the girls will place at districts and state and hopefully win a team award, and so does Maddy.
“[I hope the girls] keep growing the team size and keep getting better at wrestling, especially here in Idaho where not every school has a full team,” Maddy said. “If we could field a full girls lineup, we would have a very good shot at going top four in state as we get better with our technique.”
Last year the team finished at state, and Maddy said he would like to go at least the top eight this year.
“We set our goal as a team to go top five but as long as we beat our performance from last year I’ll be happy,” he said, adding that he’d also like to win the academic state title.
He named three individuals — Joely Slyter, Hoyt Hvass and “big Rob Storm” — who will be in contention for a state title this year.
In past years the girls would have to occasionally wrestle boys rather than girls, but this year there are enough girls that they get to wrestle each other and avoid wrestling boys for the majority of the year. At most tournaments, there are not enough girls to fill their own bracket, so they have to get mixed into the boys’ bracket. One of the only all-girl tournaments is Lady Jay, held in January. This allows them to wrestle all girls.
In the next month, Lewiston wrestlers will attend more duels, tournaments, and even host some, all leading up to the districts and state tournaments to end the season.