The Hinton Blackhawk boys won the team title in the Le Mars Wrestling Invite on Saturday scoring 206 points as a team and beating second place by eight and a half points. The win is the third tournament victory for the Blackhawks who have been wrestling well up and down the card this year. Head Coach Casey Crawford says this one was extra impressive considering they did not have an individual champion.
While the Blackhawks did not have a champion in the tournament, their individual performances were still strong. They got five wrestlers into the title bout and another two in the top three. Coach Crawford says it was a really strong performance out of his team.
Of the 13 wrestlers that weighed in for the Blackhawks, only four of them are upper-classmen leaving a lot of youth for Hinton to put on the mat. Coach Crawford says they make some mistakes at times, but their aggressiveness makes up for it.
The Blackhawks were one of the smallest schools at the tournament that featured a public school from Sioux Falls, all three from Sioux City, and a few of the biggest non-metro schools in the area. Coach Crawford says his team does not worry about that stuff and just wrestles the guy in front of them no matter where they are from.
In the most recent rankings from the Iowa Wrestling Coaches and Officials Association, the Blackhawks were ranked #17 in Class 1A and would be eligible for regional duals, and a chance to get to state. Coach Crawford says the next few duals will be big in determining whether that is realistic or not for the Blackhawks.
Those next duals for the Blackhawks will be on Tuesday night at 5:30 at Akron-Westfield.
