Big Sandy wrestlers are beating their foes on the mat but the toughest test may be the injury bug as superdivisionals loom.
“We are a little banged up right now,” said Tucker Taylor, the head coach of the Fort Benton-Big Sandy coop program.
Taylor said senior Bayley Genereux and freshman Reinhard Bold were each nursing ankle injuries by the end of last week.
Genereux got hurt earlier in the week but had returned to the mat to compete by Thursday’s mixer in Fort Benton. Taylor said in his second match of the night, Genereux defeated an opponent from White Sulphur Springs “in a pretty good barn burner.”
“You could tell (the ankle) was bothering him but he wrestled through it,” Taylor said.
Meanwhile, Bold sustained his injury in the Fort Benton meet and was expected to be unavailable to compete on Saturday at Cascade. He may return for the regular season finale this Saturday against Cascade and Circle or remain out until the Eastern B/C superdivisional Feb. 26-27 in Glasgow.
“We’re going to stay cautious and get them as healthy as we can get at divisionals,” Taylor said.
Bold won five of six matches after the Jan. 28 home mixer in Big Sandy and prior to last weekend, while Genereux and senior Brady Pleninger have each gone 2-2. The Pioneers and Longhorns traveled to Glasgow Feb. 6 but a scheduled mixer in Harlem had to be canceled.
Pleninger won a marathon of a match in three overtime periods in Thursday’s outing against junior Jacob Major of Choteau in the 205-pound division, prevailing 10-7.
Taylor said a hard-fought win like that is a good sign as the team focuses on improving their conditioning. He said there is still room for further improvement, however, and the ankle injuries to Genereux and Bold obviously impact their ability to run in practice.
