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PASCO -- It is a work in progress, this Best of the West wrestling tournament, even though it is in its ninth edition.
Pasco coach Jay Covington altered the format of the two-day event at TRAC, changing it from a team-dual tournament to a combination of team and individual.
"I wanted to try something new," Covington said. "It was all about getting mat time for kids."
Friday's matches were the team portion of the tournament, with schools split into three pools of mostly varsity squads and one of JV teams and wrestling four rounds.
Today's action will be a traditional state-bracket format, with wrestling starting at 11 a.m. and championship bouts at 6:30 p.m.
Though Friday's rounds were wrestled in an individual style -- all the 103-pounders first, followed by 112 and on up -- the matchups were between teams within a pool (i.e., Richland's first-round matchups might be against Pasco, and then against Grandview in the second round).
There were a few hiccups.
First, at least six of the original 27 teams were no-shows because of weather, which left organizers scrambling. And coaches had no idea even at the end of the day how they scored against the other teams in their pool.
Also, the one-man coaching staffs of the small schools were stretched thin at times with their kids wrestling simultaneously on three different mats, forcing the recruiting of parents and even senior wrestlers from their teams to sit in the coaching chair.
The matchups, too, were hit or miss, but that isn't any different from the previous format.
Richland's Dustin Utecht and Hermiston's Jaylee Britt wrestled perhaps the day's best match, with Utecht winning the back-and-forth 125-pound bout 9-6.
"It did feel really good," Utecht said of getting a good match against Britt, who won the 119 bracket at the Inland Empire Invite last weekend.
Utecht had been hoping to get a rematch with Hermiston's Ben Jorgensen, the two-time Oregon 5A state champion at 103 who is wrestling up at 125 and scored a major decision over Utecht last weekend.
Jorgensen had hoped to defend the Tri-State title he won last year in Coeur d'Alene. However, the driving conditions in Spokane prevented the Bulldogs from making the trip, and they instead sent their varsity and JV to Pasco.
"Yeah, for sure I wanted to get after some guys I knew and some guys I've never seen before," Jorgensen said after a first-round pin in Hermiston's final round of matches. Though, he added, his main focus is winning another state title to join Kyle Larson as the program's only three-time state champions.
Jorgensen was one of two state champions patrolling the mats Friday. The other was Sheridan McDonald of Kiona-Benton, who as a freshman won the 130-pound girls title last season.
She almost gave Pasco's Cameron Schlotman a scare in their match at 140. Schlotman, one of two holdovers from the Bulldogs' state runner-up squad in 2007 along with Gerardo Castro, opened an 11-0 lead in the first period before getting caught mid-move early in the second.
He executed a duck-under quite efficiently, then seemed to waver on the go-behind part and got thrown to his back. His big concern, he said, wasn't that he might get pinned by a girl but that he might blow an 11-point lead.
"I underestimated her," said Schlotman, who eventually reversed back and pinned McDonald. "I was trying to hit a move and got lazy."
Because of the guaranteed matches -- a chance to wrestle four Friday and at least two more today -- the coaches were mostly in favor of the new format, even if they didn't completely understand it.
As for the wrestlers, well ...
"It's just wrestling," Hanford's Mike Ruane said between a pair of pins that together lasted 48 seconds. "They call you, and you go wrestle who they tell you to go wrestle."
