Picard does it one more time for first

GREAT FALLS — Polson junior Brock Picard conquered the 171-pound contender at the inaugural Tournament of Champions in Great Falls on Saturday.

Because the AA and B-C state champs didn’t chose to attend, the AA wrestler absent due to a thumb surgery, Picard found himself face-to-face with Libby wrestler Seth Wright for the championship and only 171-pound match of the tournament.

Coincidentally, Picard had beat Wright in the final to win the Class-A state championship.

In the first bout, Picard hadn’t felt he wrestled his best. So the match had a lot riding on it. Nobody wants to turn around and lose to the wrestler they beat to win state and anyone would love to out the wrestler who had taken the gold from them.

It was Picard’s day again. He wrestled his way to a 9-2 win over Wright, a more dominant win than the one on the mat in Billings.

“I’m glad I got to wrestle him again,” Picard said, adding that he cleaned up his match in the second battle.

“I thought I wrestled him a lot better. I wrestled my match and came out with a ‘W’,” Picard said.

While a lot of wrestlers didn’t show up for the event which offered high school competitors from across classes sort out the state of Montana’s very best, and the 171-pound class fell especially short, 57 wrestlers did attend in addition to over 700 spectators.

Picard said there was plenty of great wrestling to watch and thinks that the even, sponsored by the Hoyt and Blewett PLLC law firm, will catch on over time.

“They are going to realize how much money they put into it and how much time and it’s going to blow up,” Picard predicted. “It’s going to be a really good deal.”

Arlee senior Jake Trujillo and sophomore Cole Rice also competed in the event.

Trujillo lost in a 7-4 decision to Bozeman’s David Demo, the eventual champion at the 119-pound semifinal.

Rice fell 9-4 to Kyle Taranto, another AA wrestler from Bozeman in the pigtail round.