East Valley coach is always looking for top competition for his grapplers

When you coach a successful Class 2A wrestling program, you seek out opportunities to wrestle the top teams and the top wrestlers your kids will face at the end of the season.

“There aren’t a lot of tournaments where we get to see a lot of the top Class 2A teams,” East Valley coach Craig Hanson said. “We’ve been trying to get into the Ellensburg tournament for years because that features all those top Central Washington 2A teams, but we keep getting denied.”

One opportunity was last weekend’s tournament at Blaine High School.

“That’s a great early tournament and he has a lot of good 2A schools there,” Hanson said Tuesday morning. “We were all set to go there, but we kept checking the weather reports and decided at the last minute that we wouldn’t go because of the snowstorms coming in. It’s a good thing we didn’t. I talked to the coach over there this morning and they’re still out of school because of the weather.”

Instead, Hanson sent his varsity to Central Valley for one season-opening tournament and his junior varsity to Mt. Spokane for another. This weekend he takes them to Coeur d’Alene for the annual Tri-State Tournament.

“There aren’t a lot of schools there our size, but our kids will get some good time on the mat,” Hanson said. “Lakeland has a second-chance tournament on Saturday so even our kids who lose two matches and go out the first day at Tri-State can get three matches in on Saturday.”

That’s key, especially for first-time wrestlers in the program.

“You have to get them on the mat and let them wrestle,” Hanson said. “That’s what they’re in there every day working for. If you don’t get them out there and let them compete you’ll lose them.”

The Knights are working through a lull in numbers at the freshman level, the coach said – a lull that will continue next year before normalizing.

Still, he has a quality group of freshman who are manning the lighter weights.

“We’re right at 50 kids,” he said. “Four of them are girls. Nine are freshmen. That’s the one thing that’s a real hang-up for us at this time.

“It’s weird that it didn’t really impact the girls programs, but it did football and wrestling. But we’ll get past that. The freshmen we have are good. Three of them are in our starting lineup.”

To keep the program on solid footing, Hanson said, he tries to retain at least a dozen wrestlers at each grade level.

Team leadership should help the youngsters stay motivated and on a solid learning curve.

Senior Randy McDonald has shouldered a big load in that department.

“Our toughest competition right now is between 130 and 145 pounds and Randy is right there in the middle of all that,” Hanson said. “We had a great group there last year and these guys were kind of kept down a little by them.

“Randy was part of that group of leaders last year and he did a good job. This year a lot of it has fallen to him. He’s kind of our alpha dog.”

A three-time state placer, McDonald sets a good example, both in the practice room and during matches.

“If I had to pin it down to one thing, the thing that separates Randy is that he doesn’t concede a lot of matches,” Hanson said. “When it’s a close match, more often than not, if I went back and looked at everything, he rarely loses matches that are close. He’s really a smart kid. He understands everything in the match and has everything calculated.”

McDonald wrestles a somewhat different style than most wrestlers, preferring to attack from an open position.

“Those kind of guys are pretty dangerous when they shoot from the outside,” the coach said. “He has some go-tos that he uses when he has to, but his best spot is open.

“A couple of the guys he practices against are that same style of wrestler and I think that helps him. He’s pretty wiry and he’s stronger than people think from looking at him. He has to wrestle some taller guys in practice and we have a few stumpy kids that he has to work on. It does a good job of getting them all ready to go.”