Bobcat wrestling warm-up

Practice began Monday for the 2019/20 edition of Bobcat wrestlers. Head coach Travis McDermott and his assistant Trey Ottley along with volunteers former state champion Chris Ryan and Will Farrell will be faced with the challenge of repeating the seasonal record of last year’s regional champs and 4th place state finishers.

Bobcat optimism is borne on the back of returning veterans who accounted for 85 points in Casper last year. State champion Logan Cole (junior) along with runners-up Wyatt McDermott (sophomore) and Remington Ferree (junior) lead the returnees which also include seniors Riley Shaffer and Hunter Mounts, sophomores Cole Christianson, Austin Barral, and Jarrek Sorenson, and freshmen new to the program are Roedy Farrell and Elijah Skelton.

Also joining the team this year are senior Jorge Agguire and juniors Vinny Moody and Monte Love.

Though the Bobcats will be without McDermott’s services for the first half of the season as he rehabs a football injury, his return will likely solidify a line up which will be most productive in the middle and upper weights unlike the usual lineup of the past several years which saw the lighter weights have backup and JV wrestlers. Such will not be the case this season.

According to Coach McDermott, “Numbers are down, and the lighter weights up to 126 will be hard to fill. We’ll not know just what the lineup will be until the season is under way.” As he has in the past, McDermott emphasized his belief in the ability of his Bobcats to compete with anybody in the state on an individual basis, and his coaching philosophy of looking forward to the challenge of competition is as firm as it was for last year’s Bobcats..

That competition will start in mid-December with the Powell Invitational, a basically 3A tourney with a scattering of 2A and 4A teams from the area and Montana. The Bobcats outcome there will be an early gauge on what the season may hold for this edition of the Thermopolis Bobcat wrestlers. December will conclude with a dual with Greybull/Riverside at home Dec. 19, and the annual Battle of the Bighorns in Worland Dec. 20-21.

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