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Show r B6 Wednesday, January 12, 2005 The UHS wrestling team and coaches will be part of the Intermountain Tournament of Champions to be held at Western Park this weekend. The UHS team is currently ranked 30th in the nation. Tournament of Champions comes to Western Park By Virginia Harrington Express Writer The annual Intermountain Wrestling Tournament of Champions will once again be held at Western Park. The tournament tour-nament will be held Jan. 14 and 15. Junior Varsity (JV) starts off the tournament Friday morning at 11 a.m. and Varsity competition begins at 3 that afternoon. JV starts the day on Saturday with matches at 7:30 a.m. and Varsity matches begin at 9 a.m. with the quarter finals. Semi finals will start at approximately noon and finals will begin at approximately 5:30 p.m. Spectators are advised to come a little early as starting times for the events are approximate. approx-imate. The parade of teams will be held Friday at 2:30 p.m. with all the wrestlers entering the arena. There will be eight mats on the floor at all times with nonstop non-stop action. Wrestlers will be on deck, ready to take their place on the mat as each match Mason Smuin, Uintah guard, looks Mansfield spurs on his team against & (m A.J ,0 ' ( ' v' 7 A "yy?U' ; v $ - 4 V Mil) LJTAU t vl Ribbon is cut on an indoor skating rink at Western Park. The $1.2 million facility was financed by the Uintah Recreation District and Western Park. Holding the ribbon are Commissioners Dave Haslem, Jim Abegglen and Mike McKee. Others participating in the ribbon cutting are Western Park Board members, Uintah Recreation Board members, Western Park Staff and hockey supporters. is finished. The tournament will be held in bracket format which eliminates competitors who lose two matches. Junior Varsity competitors will gain considerable experience expe-rience through the JV Duels that will be held throughout the tournament. In the duels, each team wrestles a team from another town, resulting in wins for an entire team. "We want the tournament to grow and the JV Duels help," said Gregg Stensgard, wrestling coach at Uintah High School (UHS). He and Dirk Hatch, manager man-ager of Western Park, said the annual tournament has grown in size every year since the 19951996 school year. Competitors come to Vernal from Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, Arizona and New Mexico as well as all over Utah. Stensgard said the only other tournament that has traditionally been larger larg-er is one held in Reno, Nev. and he expects to outdo Reno this year or next year. The tournament consisted of 12 teams the first year, 24 teams the second year and 50 teams " i : to pass underneath the basket as Uintah basketball Coach Scott Judge Memorial. The Utes were soundly defeated by the Bulldogs. r in 13. Indoor Ice p!rag last year. This year between 40 and 50 teams are expected to compete. Each team consists of 14 wrestlers plus their coaches, trainers and parents. "This is an economic boon to the community," said Hatch. "We advise the restaurants to prepare extra food," noted Stensgard. "We expect there will be 10,000 fast food meals sold." Hatch said hotels and motels from Rangely, Colo, to Roosevelt are filled. "People start making their reservations a year in advance," he said. "Gregg has made this the single biggest event of the winter." Stensgard said the competing compet-ing teams are the best in the intermountain area. "Our winners are usually nationally nation-ally ranked," he said. The UHS team is currently ranked 30th in the nation. Hatch said he expects the stands at Western Park to be packed with 3,500 spectators. Anyone interested in more information may contact Hatch at 789-7396. u 820 Chrisy Hacking goes up to score 2 of her 6 points in pre-season play against a tough Emery squad as 83 Amber Bunderson hustles in for a possible rebound. Although the Utes played scrappy through three quarters, it wasn't enough to catch Emery High as they went on to beat the Utes 59-51. Lady Utes split games at home The Uintah girls basketball basket-ball team split a pair of games last week, loosing to Emery 51 - 59 and then bouncing back on Friday to win their Region 10 opener, against Judge Memorial, 44 - 30. Emery scored the first basket bas-ket of the game, leading 16 to 11 after the first quarter and never trailed the rest of the game. They came out shooting the ball and played with a lot of energy and enthusiasm and the Utes never could seem to stop their momentum. "It just seemed like every time we had a chance to cut the lead to four or five points, we couldn't get the basket or defensive stop we needed," said Coach Shannon Johnson. "Emery has a very good team who should be a' state contender contend-er for the next few years since they have no seniors on the team." Lindsey Christensen played well for Uintah, scoring 17 points and four three-point shots. She was followed by Lacey Christensen with 10 points. Amber Bunderson had 6 points. Krissy Hacking played her best game of the year contributing 5 points and 8 rebounds. "I thought Krissy was really a bright spot for us. She played with a lot of energy and toughness tough-ness and seemed to be around every rebound," Johnson said. Maggie Bartel and Sara Cushing chipped in four points each. Jessica Labium and Amy Parkinson each had 2 points and Nicole Brady rounded out the scoring with a point. "After the Emery loss I had a lot of people come up to ask me if I felt bad," Johnson said. "My reply to them and our team was only if we didn't learn two things from it. 1) Teams are going to bring their "A" game against us so we need to be more focused from the start and 2) We can't always rely on our offense to win games. Our defense has to get us through the tough stretches." The girls learned from the loss and jumped out on Judge -II , 924 Lindsey Christensen looks inside to center, Sarah Cushing 822, while the referee counts down lane seconds. Both Christensen and Cushing were vital players in the first big win for the Lady Utes as they soundly defeated the Bulldogs 44-28 in Vernal last Friday evening. 24 Lindsey Christensen lets loose another three-pointer that helped keep the Lady Utes close in Tuesday nights pre-season game. The Utes started slow to a fast running Emery squad and tried to play catch-up all night losing 59-51. The girls hosted the Judge Memorial bulldogs Friday evening for their Region 10 opener. 17 - 9 the first quarter, last Friday. Maggie Bartel started the game on fire as she scored 8 of her game high 12 points in the first quarter. They were also the Ute's first 8 points. "I felt like Maggie just played relaxed and let the game come to her and just took what they gave her," Johnson said. Lindsey Christensen added 9 points. Krissy Hacking had 6 points. Sophomore Amy Parkinson really came in and gave the team nice lift, contributing contrib-uting 6 points and playing good defense. Sara Cushing played a good game scoring 5 points and coming up with 7 rebounds, all on the defensive end. Lacey Christensen had 4 points and Marissa McKeachnie added 2. Nichole Brady played a solid game and had 3 rebounds. "It was a nice win for us," Johnson said about the Judge game. "I was most pleased with our defense and our rebounding. rebound-ing. We only gave 3 offensive rebounds for the game which is outstanding and held Judge under 10 points for all four quarters. Judge is a scrappy team and will be in the hunt for the region title so it was good to hold our home court." The JV team defeated Emery 40 - 33 and lost to Judge 31 - 32. Amy Parkinson scored 11 points against Emery and Nicole Brady added 8. The sophomore team ran their record to 9 -1 on the season sea-son with a 33 - 29 win over Emery and outscoring Judge 49 - 28. Marissa McKeachnie lead the Utes in scoring against Emery with 12 followed by Amy Parkinson with 11. Amy had 19 points against Judge, followed by Nicole with 14 and Kelsi Robb added 11. The Utes traveled to Granite on Tuesday and are at Park City on Friday. Granite is a much improved team. "They've lost quite a few games but I would expect them to compete and win some region games this year,"; Johnson said. "They always play well at home." Park City was picked by the coaches to finish second in the region. As a team they have made 39 three-point shots so Uintah is going to have another solid defensive outing. "I'm sure they'll be ready for us," Johnson said. |