We are pleased, but not content. This type of finish is only going to make us hungrier.

Paul broke the Waldport dry spell of state placers last year when he placed fifth, and now we've made a bit more recent history by placing three wrestlers in the same year. It's been a long time since that has happened and since we've had a wrestler in the state finals. With all these placers returning next year, we are poised to make major gains next season.

Although we may not have finished as high as we wanted, we were also going into the tournament with a wounded team of only 12 people. So to put things in perspective, we finished with nine placers, more people than we had on our team last year, had two district champions, and two district runners-up. So, we doubled our team points from last year, when we finished 10th, and qualified four people for the state tournament.

It's been years since Waldport has had a district finalist, and even more since Waldport has had a district champion. Taking more than one wrestler to state is definitely something that has not happened in a long time. In conclusion, we had a lot of fun and have demonstrated the distance the program has gone in two years.

Once again, considering we are wrestling with half a team and down a varsity wrestler, our performance exceeded our own expectations.

I knew the odds were against us ... but I knew I had to do something else.