On Saturday the Junior Trojans had a home wrestling tournament at Pahrump Valley High School. The Premier Division took second place and the Rookie Division took first place.
The tournament had a good turnout with 10 teams showing up for the all-day action. Most of the teams came from the Las Vegas area, and there was one team from Utah.
The Junior Trojans are a wrestling club that is part of the Southern Nevada Wrestling Association. Wrestlers wrestle from ages 4 until 14. The team is currently in third place out of six teams in both the Premier Division and the Rookie Division.
In the tourney many of the local wrestlers took top honors. Trojans Coach Ray Cortez said his team did well and scored enough points to either keep them at third place or move up in the standings. “If you look at the SNWA standings, team GV Platinum is blowing all the other teams away with 964.5 points,” Cortez said. “As far as the Premier Division goes they are head and shoulders above everyone else. To be in second, third and fourth, that is like the alternative top three.”
The team scored 38 pins in both the Premier Division and the Rookie Division, which was the best in the tournament.
Cortez likes his team’s current standing.
“Third place is pretty good stuff and that is pretty much where we were last year at this time,” he said. “For a bunch of new kids they are doing pretty well. We have new kids and new coaches.”
To coach at the Junior Trojans level does not require any previous wrestling experience.
“The coaches learn as we go,” the coach said. “They will learn with the kids. I will demonstrate the moves and the coaches will teach it. If they have trouble with the move then I will show them myself. I will also put the inexperienced coaches with the smaller kids where the moves are not so technical.”
The team started the year with 52 kids and now has around 48. Wrestling starts in October for these kids and can go way into April.
“We could go well into the springtime, but baseball comes and takes most of these kids away,” Cortez said.
The Junior Trojans had 12 first places in their only home appearance of the season. The following wrestlers received a first place: Chase Ottesson, Gunner Cortez, Dylan Wright, Angel Pinzon, Bryson Koivu, Kayne Horibe, Blyson Marquez, Joseph Barton, River Cable, Austin Sandoval, Peyton Coffman, Isai Gomez.
Cortez thanked the parents for supporting the team by helping out at the home tournament and Trojans Coach Craig Rieger. Rieger’s team helped out with the officiating and setup.
The team will travel to Henderson to take on Liberty this weekend. The regular season ends with the state finals which will be in Las Vegas this year in the third week of March.