Carbon duels provide winners for home team

By Sun Advocate

Carbon High wrestling coach Dave Smith would always like his team to win every tournament they go to, but sometimes experience, especially in the preseason is more important that being an outright winner. That’s the way it was at the annual Carbon Duels that was held this past Friday and Saturday in the home confines of the Dinogym.
“We decided it would be good for all the kids to get the experience so we took two teams out of our squad with half of each team being varsity wrestlers and the other half junior varsity. We called them Carbon One and Carbon A.”
Putting those kids in the two, somewhat less strong teams would seem to most people like asking for defeat, especially when five other teams were coming to town with their varsity squads to compete.
Surprisingly to some people, but apparently not to Smith, the Carbon One team tied for first place and Carbon A placed fourth.
These results were posted against teams from Emery, North Sanpete, Monticello, Woods Cross and Union High Schools.
“Because of the way the tournament was set up Carbon One was listed as a third place finisher, but they actually tied for first place in points,” stated Smith.
The team also provided individual winners galore. First place finishers for Carbon included Josh Critchlow at 189 lbs., Trent Greenhalgh at 119 lbs., Courtney Ivory at 125 lbs., Zack Burdick at 140 lbs., Dustin Howa at 135 lbs., Dallen McFarlane at 152 lbs., Tim Lasslo at 160 lbs., and Ryan Leonard at 275 lbs.
This year the classification of heavyweight has been changed to the 275 lbs. class. In fact Smith says that no one who weighs over 275 can now compete in the class.
It was a good tournament start for this years version of the Carbon wrestling squad.
The team will now travel on Thursday to Roosevelt to meet the Union Cougar wrestlers and then next weekend they will go to Orem High School for the Rocky Mountain Rumble tournament.