Wrestling Team ups their intensity

The Cashmere High School Wrestling Team participated in the Double Dual at Cascade High School on Tuesday, December 5 along with Cascade, Royal City and Tonasket.
Cashmere first wrestled against the Tonasket Tigers, one of the best teams in the state.
"We absolutely got beat up, manhandled and abused," Coach Ken Hoyt said about playing against Tonasket. "They had their way with us even though there was great effort on our part."
According to Hoyt, going up against Tonasket was more than what the team could handle at this point in their season.
The wrestlers lacked intensity and execution against the Tigers.
But after being challenged by the coaching staff between their matches to up their game, the Bulldogs came back with a lot more intensity against the Royal City Knights and won their matches.
"Highlights for that match were that Tristan Napoles wrestled a good match and Aaron Guerrero had a good match," Coach Hoyt said.
For the JV portion, Skyler Weirma also performed very well and won his match.
Within the Varsity team, Aaron Guerrero, Whelan Gillikin, Tristan Napoles, Bryson Pratt and Matt Powell all won their matches and competed well.
According to Hoyt, there were four forfeits made that night.
"There was great effort," Hoyt said. "But we still have a long way to go. We're still young and inexperienced."
The Cascade Double Dual was a good learning experience for the kids Hoyt stated. The dual helped the students learn that they need to set goals for themselves and they need to set those goals high.
"We've got to know where we're at and we've got to know who we are," Hoyt said. "We need to wrestle the best and they need to address individually what they need to do."
On Saturday, December 2 the team traveled over to Omak where they competed in the Pioneers' Invite along with Brewster, Cascade, Tonasket and Okanogan.
Hoyt shared that the coaches will be working with the students to help them set high yet realistic goals for the season and to prepare them mentally and physically for upcoming matches.
Hoyt added that setting high goals is not only a great thing to do for sports but that it will help prepare the kids for later on in their lives as well.
"We have to have activity with achievement in mind, not have activity for activity's sake," Hoyt said.
Friday, December 15 will see a non-league Double Dual take place at home and Saturday, December 16 will be the Cashmere Invite, which will start at 10:00 a.m.