Wrestle Mania Titans Triumph In Impassioned Battle Of The Bone Between Cv, U-Hi

FROM VALLEY VOICE page V11 (Thursday, January 30, 1997): Correction The Central Valley wrestler in Saturday’s Valley Voice picture was incorrectly identified. It was Reggie Oakes going against U-Hi’s Andy Roberts.

The sport of wrestling is big in Spokane. It gets even bigger when there’s a bone to gnaw on.

Thursday night’s annual University-Central Valley Battle of the Bone was every bit as impassioned as the area’s spirit basketball games.

It had everything in the way of impact and drama. The Bone trophy was at stake. So, too, was first place in the Greater Spokane League. And it was played out at Central Valley, which has the largest seating capacity of any Spokane-area high school gymnasium.

The place was packed.

“I bet you money there was not a bigger crowd in the history of the GSL,” marveled U-Hi coach Don Owen. “I told them over the P.A. at school to be there. The kids came out in force.”

It was a near-capacity audience in excess of 2,500, and the electricity rivaled any Stinky Sneaker crowd.

With wrestlers competing under the glow of a single lamp, there is little orchestrated cheering going on.

But the drama of individual combat in the center arena was enough to involve the fans, who vocally championed their favorites throughout the two-hour thriller.

U-Hi students wore black T-shirts with a skull and crossbones logo imprinted with the words, “Bad to the Bone”.

Central Valley patisans wore rainbow-colored tie-dyed T-shirts. On the east wall, under black light, were psychedelic signs in pastel blue and pink harkening back to the peace and love 1960s.

Strange, considering that in this match the unbeaten Bears and once-beaten Titans made war.

CV wrestlers came out, their hair tinted a vivid blue color, the idea of 158-pounder Courtney Brown.

“I just thought it would be neat for the team,” he said. “Not so much for intimidation, but because we are close. I thought it would be a fun thing for the school and the event.”

It was something like last year when Mead wrestlers died their hair yellow for a big match. But Brown got the notion from Ferris’s basketball players, who earlier this month bleached their hair for the Rubber Chicken game against Lewis and Clark.

Titan coach Owen felt his team needed to win two of the night’s first three matches. He conceded Brown’s pin at 158 pounds, but figured his wrestlers could win at 148 and 168.

It didn’t quite go as scripted when 168 pounds got away. CV sophomore Blair Alderman won, the beneficiary of four third-period penalty points.

CV led 15-3 after three matches before Titan Sam Butler moved up two weights and won by pin.

U-Hi fell behind again 24-13 before Gordon Bash won by major decision, Jared Osborn beat John Reese in a showdown between 115-pound unbeatens and Andy Roberts won by technical fall to make it 27-25 Bears with two matches remaining.

The Titans won them both and left the audience drained of further emotion. With the victory, U-Hi earned a piece of its third straight Greater Spokane League championship.

Denied an outright title, Central Valley can also tie for the championship, its first since 1986.

The match had left the rafters shaking from ear-splitting decible levels and brought grown men to tears.

It earned for a grinning Ed Stretch a ride on the shoulders of his Titan teammates following his last-match triumph and 31-27 University victory.

And it kept the Bone in the U-Hi trophy case.

CV’s wrestlers may have tinted their own hair, but it was the Titans who left them blue.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 color photos