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The Thompson Falls Blue Hawks did not win the team title in the CM Russell Christmas Classic wrestling tournament in Great Falls last week, in fact they didn't even come close to it.

But coach Mike Thilmony and his Hawks left the 2019 Classic a much better team than they were before the tournament started nonetheless.

Coach Thilmony's standout son Trae Thilmony, a sophomore, won second place at 120 pounds in the 60-plus team tourney and senior Seth Alarcon battled his way to an eighth place win at 182. And that's not even mentioning other Blue Hawk mat battlers like Dakota Irvine (205), Dane Chojnacky (170), Elijah Ratliff (132), Lucas Andersen (152), Shane Reishus (145) and Josh Baldwin (160), who also wrestled a lot, and improved a lot by the time the super-tough tourney was over, coach Thilmony said.

"It was a great tournament, I am still a little exhausted from it," coach Thilmony said Monday. "It was a real good learning experience, for the kids individually and for us as a team.

"I am very proud of the way our kids competed over there," he added. "Now we can reflect on where we want to go from here and focus in on the rest of the season."

The Hawks will return to the mats Jan. 3-4 for the Ronan Duals before a string of important tournaments later in in January, including the Cut Bank Invitational Jan. 10-11, the Choteau Invite Jan. 17-18 and the Ted Kato Memorial in Thompson Falls Jan. 25.

Missoula Big Sky won the 60-plus team meet in Great Falls with 204.5 points, Great Falls (193.5) was second and Class AA schools occupied the top eight team places in the Classic. The Hawks, with 61.5 points, finished a very respectable 25th. Thilmony thought they could have finished even higher in the team standings.

"We had a few tough draws that matched us up with tough kids right off the bat," he said. "If we had a more favorable draw or two, we could have done even better in team scoring."

Trae Thilmony, writing another chapter in his already storied high school mat career, didn't need any help from the luck of the draw in moving to his coveted CMR Classic medal.

Thilmony won his way into the 120-pound final by pinning Tannin Baumann of Fort Benton in 19 seconds in his first match, winning a 17-6 major decision from Missoula Big Sky's Israel Moreno in the second round, pinning Keagan Gransbery of Butte in 3:53 of the quarterfinals and finally, winning a tense 4-2 decision from CM Russell's Colton Martello in the semis.

Martello was the State AA champ at 120 last year. Thilmony turned and near-falled the hometown hero Martello for the decisive three points in the closing seconds. Thilmony's second place win in the Christmas Classic marks a high-water mark for the Thompson Falls wrestling program.

John Hamilton

SHANE REISHUS in action at Mission two weeks ago.

Trae fell to nemesis Tanner Cook of Columbus-Absarokee 8-3 in the championship match. "Trae had a great tournament," his proud father said. "We've got some work to do with solving Cook, but have time to deal with that in the next several weeks."

Thilmony also went around with Cook last year, losing to him in the State B-C tournament semifinals at 113 pounds. Stay tuned for the rest of this ongoing mat story later on this season.

Alarcon got his eighth place medal the old-fashioned way – he earned it, coach Thilmony said, also citing the extra efforts of Chojnacky, Irvine, Ratliff, Andersen, Reishus and Baldwin in the Electric City.

"This tournament was a great gut check for us, I commend all our kids for the effort they put in in Great Falls," he said. "I think we are now a better team for it."