We've Got The County Covered
We've Got The County Covered
The Harlem Wildcat wrestling program begins the new season under the direction of head coach Joe Shupe, a long time mentor at Harlem High School.
Shupe has coached football and track for the Wildcats and has been an assistant for the wrestling program for many years before taking over this fall. He will be joined by Jonny Baker, a first year assistant to the Wildcat program.
Shupe and Baker will look to build a young but hungry group of wrestlers into contenders by season's end.
"We're pretty young, T'Jay, Reece wrestled at state and Colten was wrestling well before he got hurt, but we are young," stated Shupe.
The Wildcats return four wrestlers that qualified for the state B/C tournament a year ago. Senior T'Jay Allen won his opening match in Billings at 138 pounds. Junior Reece Hutton wrestled as a heavyweight, and sophomore Gavin Horn at 113 pounds.
In addition senior Colten Stiffarm was wrestling very well at Heavyweight before a knee injury ended his season, but he is back healthy and ready to help the team.
Juniors Kheyshawn Skidmore, Tyus Hammett and Marcus Castillo are also out this winter and will look to help the team.
Sophomores include Curtis Humphreys and Daniel Rasmussen.
New to the program are freshman Jonah Buck, Kolton Bishop and Moses Smith.
The Wildcats compete in the Northern B/C along with Chinook, Malta, Big Sandy, Chester-Joplin-Inverness, Cut Bank, Conrad and Shelby.
The team will look to Allen and Stiffarm to lead the team as seniors.
Hutton has been a standout performer for the Wildcats and recently garnered All-State football recognition. He will be looked to as well for leadership in the wrestling room. Horn qualified for the state tournament as a freshman and can bring that experience to the room.
The Wildcats will begin the season this Friday and Saturday at the Cascade Invitational. The opportunity to get on the mat and get things started is step one for the program, "Were going down there to get after it, were not going to lay on our backs. The kids want to compete and that's what were going to do," added Shupe.
"We got a lot to learn, but we are eager. We will use these first few weeks to see where we are and get some things figured out," said Shupe.
Determining who's going to wrestle where is a problem for every team but the Wildcats are a little stacked up, "We have four heavyweights, two twenty pounders, two thirty eight pounders. We need to get spread out a bit if we can and we'll be all right," concluded Shupe.
The Wildcats will close out 2015 with meets in Chinook, Glasgow and Fort Benton before heading to the Holiday Classic in Great Falls.
