The Spanish Fork Dons wrestling team traveled to snowy
West Jordan on Friday and Saturday to participate in the
sixteen team West Jordan Dual Tournament and surprised
the rest of the high school wrestling world by not only
capturing the championship trophy, but barely breaking a
sweat in doing so.
Despite competing with fifteen of the toughest teams
from two states, the Dons were never intimidated as they
rolled to six straight team victories on their way to
the tournament crown.
In a grueling format that had the Dons wrestle two
duals on Friday and four on Saturday, the Red and Gray
showed surprising grit as they refused to show any loss
of energy or spark right through the final match of the
night. For those keeping score, the Dons beat in order,
the Alta Hawks 47-16, the Bingham Miners 55-12,
Taylorsville 57-6, Roy High 38-27, the Springville Red
Devils 37-23 and in the championship match, the Box
Elder Bees 42-21.
We are not talking about white knuckle wins here
folks, we are talking about six good old fashioned
whuppins. Oh, and by the way, we are also not talking
about picking on a bunch of weakling first year schools
here, we're talking about six of the most respected
programs from the 4A and 5A ranks.
Box Elder, whom the Dons kicked in the championship
finale are currently rank #1 in 4A, and Weber, who took
third place is ranked #1 in the State 5A.
Going undefeated in all six matches for Spanish were
Dave Sorensen at 152, Kyle Weight at 171 and Eric
Kitchen at 189 pounds. With only one blemish were Nolan
Haycock at 130, Tom Clark at 135, Rod Cox at 140, Bret
Grover and Hadley Thorpe who shared the 145 pound weight
class, Kade Christensen at 215 and heavyweight Brock
Wilson. The remaining members of the championship roster
for the Dons were Traven Gardner, 103, Ryan Pehrson at
112, Matt Anderson at 119, Kaleb Ashworth at 125 and
Phil Sorensen at 160.
There were a number of heroes who wrestled
spectacularly for the Dons throughout, and others who
won key match-ups along the way, but if this writer were
to pick an MVW for Clark's charges, it would easily go
to Kade Christensen who wrestled at 215 pounds. The Dons
wrestled the first month of the season without a 215
pounder when head coach Dave Clark finally got tired of
forfeiting that weight at every match and sought out
Kade to see if he might come out of retirement and plug
that annoying hole in his line-up. Despite not having
wrestled since the eighth grade, Kade took Clark's
challenge and dusted off his sneakers and eased himself
back onto the mat. After taking a few lumps in his first
few outings, Christensen wedged himself into a real
groove at West Jordan and won five of his six matches
against extremely quality opponents, losing only to a
ranked kid from Roy, but upsetting the second ranked 5A
wrestler from Bingham with a phenomenal first round pin.
This win gives the Dons tremendous momentum and a
giant boost in confidence as they look to finish out
region wars and head into post season region and State
finals and it couldn't come at a better time for the
kids.
No doubt that those who consider themselves experts
in the world of Utah wrestling will take notice of the
Dons powerful performance at West Jordan, and maybe,
just maybe give them at least passing respect as teams
head into the home stretch of competition.
The Dons entertain North Sanpete at home before
traveling to always tough Pleasant Grove on Thursday in
Region IV action.