Owen orders family style
The family tradition continued Saturday at North Idaho College.
Following in well-trod family footsteps, University High’s Brian Owen won his second Tri-State wrestling tournament championship in three years, beating Matt Sencenbaugh of Auburn to win the 119-pound title.
Western Washington powerhouse Sedro Woolley won the team championship, beating Hermiston, Ore., 158 points to 149 1/2. Lake Stevens was third, followed by Sandpoint. U-Hi was the highest Spokane finisher, coming in seventh, followed by Lakeland and Coeur d’Alene. Lewiston was 11th and Deer Park 13th.
A state champion and Tri-State champion as a freshman, Owen suffered a broken back during the summer of his sophomore year. Despite the injury, he wrestled and finished second at Tri-State a year ago and did the same at the State 4A tournament in Tacoma.
“Last year it was a case where we knew he couldn’t injury himself further by wrestling,” said Owen’s coach and uncle, Don Owen. “It was a case of whether or not Brian could deal with the pain.”
This year, the junior is on his way back from surgery. In a sport and at a weight in which a premium is placed on flexibility, Owen has two vertebrae fused in his back.
The victory is a triumph over not only his competition, but over a body that balks at doing some of the things Owen is used to doing on a wrestling mat.
“I think there’s a lot of pressure on our family to do well here at this tournament,” said Don Owen. “Our family name is so connected to this tournament, and I think that all of the nephews have been under pretty intense pressure to do well here.”
The tournament director, John Owen, is Brian’s father and head coach at Central Valley. Owen, as head wrestling coach at North Idaho, won six national junior college championships. Ferris and Polson, Mont., are also coached by Owen uncles. The referee of the 125-pound championship match was Brian Owen’s uncle, Mike, the former head wrestling coach at Missoula’s Sentinel High.
“This is my family’s favorite tournament,” Brian Owen said. “It’s so close to Christmas that everybody gets together here.”
Don Owen said he gets concerned watching his nephew.
“Brian is such a mentally tough kid and he’s always been such a risk-taker,” he said. “He can do so many things on a wrestling mat that other kids just can’t. Sometimes I wish he wouldn’t do some of the things that he does, things that put his body at risk.
“He’s more than just a wrestler for me. He’s blood.”
Also at the event, Coeur d’Alene freshman Braden Mowry continued making waves at 103.
The undefeated Mowry won his weight division, pinning Timmy Pepperdine of Sandpoint with 16 seconds left in the second period.
Mowry, who won the Inland Empire Classic last week, came in seeded fourth in the lightest weight class.
“I think that’s what they seeded me off of,” Mowry said. “That was a pretty good spot for me, but I had hoped to be seeded a little higher than that.”
Mowry has been a regular at the annual tournament and tried to keep from being distracted by the wall-to-wall action.
“This is such a big tournament and the competition is so tough that I tried not to think about it,” he said. “I just tried to stay focused on each of my matches and not think about what else was going on.”
Aberdeen 189-pounder Erich Schmidtke was 3 seconds away from suffering his first loss in 55 matches in his final with Clayton Foster (12-1) of Kamiah. With a minute left in the scoreless match, Schmidtke surrendered an escape, but managed a takedown to win the match in the final seconds.
Lake Stevens’ Kelly Kubec, ranked No. 5 in the nation at 130, won his third Tri-State title by scoring a 13-0 major decision over Sam Lane of Deer Park.
In an intrastate showdown, Sedro Woolley’s Derek Crouter, the top-ranked 112-pounder in Washington, scored a 2-0 victory over Sentinel’s Jake Love, who is No. 1-ranked in Montana.
Auburn Riverside’s Michael Mangrum, ranked No. 2 in the nation, won by technical fall over Lake Stevens’ Josh Monson.
Top-ranked Shane Onufer of Auburn topped Andrew Buck, a senior from Kelso, to win the 171 title.