BC Middle School wrestlers continue to dominate

The wrestlers on the Boundary County Middle School team are coming up on the end of their eight-week season and they are looking as strong as ever. In a conversation with head wrestling coach Justin Pluid, one word kept resurfacing: “dominate”.

According to Pluid, it’s simple: “Our talent just far exceeds our competition.” He says the wrestlers are winning at least 75 percent of their matches, and putting up twice the numbers as their opponents. In other words, dominating.

The team has performed well against similarly sized schools such as St Maries, Kellogg and Priest River, but what’s really turning heads is their ability to take down wrestlers from much larger programs in Sandpoint and Post Falls.

So far the team has competed in six local meets against the schools mentioned above, but they have also had the opportunity to travel to a few bigger meets, such as the one down in Boise. Pluid says the 16 wrestlers that travelled to the Boise meet did really well against the big, urban wrestling programs in the central part of the state. “They were raising some eyebrows,” he says, “and had people thinking, ‘I don’t know what they got going on in Northern Idaho...’”

The main reason these young athletes are able to compete at such a high level, according to Pluid, is their willingness to put in the extra time. Many of the wrestlers are competing year-round and they first got involved in the local Bonners Ferry Wrestling Club at a young age.

Since wrestling is a grueling, individual sport where the athletes have only themselves to depend on, work ethic is everything, and “they are working their tails off around the clock,” Pluid says. Apparently all that work is paying off.

“Evan Baragas, Kyle Smith, those are two pretty big names,” Pluid says. “Jake Summerfield is a little stud. Ian Beazer is coming on strong. We have a little sixth-grader, Marcus Regehr, who is just an absolute buzzsaw...super fun to watch. The list goes on and on.”

And its not just the boys who are turning heads. The BCMS team also has a couple female wrestlers who have had no trouble manhandling the boys out on the mat.

Pluid says it is really fun to see the girls getting into wrestling, and he believes it is helping to revitalize the sport: “Its what’s gonna keep the sport alive I think.”

Clearly this is not just Pluid’s personal opinion, as colleges all around the country have added women’s wrestling as a sport in the 12 years since the women’s competition was introduced to the Summer Olympics in 2004.

After seeing how well the wrestlers have performed over the past month or so, Pluid has high hopes for this year’s end-of-season district tournament, which will take place at Kellogg on Dec. 8. Pluid says that the BCMS team has been finishing either second or third at district in recent tournaments, but that they have brought home just one championship trophy in the past five years. Pluid says he really believes that they have a good shot at the trophy this year.

“We’re looking forward to bringing home another championship to the junior high and help these kids kick off a great high school career.”