Crook County won its eighth 4A boys wrestling team title and first since 2018 on Friday at Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

PORTLAND -- For two days, the Country County Cowboys had more horses than any of the other 4A boys wrestling teams in the building.

Crook County’s Landon Lavey, Gavin Sandoval, and Casen Villastrigo each won individual championships as the Cowboys locked up another 4A boys team title during Friday’s finals of the OSAA/OnPoint Community Credit Union wrestling championships at Portland’s Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

The Cowboys also had four second-place finishers, three third-place finishers, and four fifth-place finishers, wracking up 319 points to secure their eighth state team title and first since 2018.

Defending champion Sweet Home finished second with 284.5 points, followed by La Grande (156), Pendleton (149), and Cascade (129).

“We love it,” said Sandoval, the Cowboys’ 175-pound senior. “This is what our team has been looking for since I was a freshman. It's what we’ve been working for as a team. We’ve always been pushing each other to get that team title.

“Our brotherhood came together. These guys aren’t teammates. They’re brothers. And when you have a bunch of brothers fighting for each other out there, it really shows.”

Of the 20 Crook County wrestlers who qualified for state, 19 contributed to the team scoring. the Cowboys' 319 points also were the most points scored by a winning 4A team since the Crook County's 2015 team scored 337.

“There’s always some ups and downs,” Crook County coach Jake Gonzales said. “There’s some heartache for some guys who didn’t get what they wanted, but part of wrestling is you’ve got to learn from that and come back and get third.

“This was a whole team effort. Not just these kids, but all the kids back home and all our training partners and coaches. It feels good to finally bring a team title back to Crook County.”

The four Crook County wrestlers who finished second — Tanner Brumble at 106, Alejandro Vargas at 113, Chance Yancey at 132, and Jayden Lopez at 165 — racked up 92 team points between them.

Then there were the three Cowboys who finished third — Evan Provost at 113, Duke Wentzel at 120, and Chase Hemphill at 126 — and accounted for another 64.5 team points.

“I think our team really gelled this year,” Gonzales said. “We took care of each other and worked extremely hard. The foundation that I try to preach to these kids is understanding the importance of hard work, being good people, doing the right thing, and doing little things right.

“Sometimes it doesn’t work out, right? You’ve just got to believe in what you’re doing and go back to work. If it doesn’t work out for you, just work hard and be a good person.”

Sweet Home scored four individual titles with Riley Vaughan at 113, two-time champion Jesse Landroop at 120, Tytus Hardee at 126, and Dillian Davis at 132. The Huskies also had nine other wrestlers reach the podium, but couldn’t keep pace with Crook County.

3A Boys

The Burns Hilanders left no doubt who the best Class 3A boys wrestling team in the state was on Friday night.

Led by four-time champions Kale Cornell and Easton Kemper, the Hilanders finished with six individual titles to clinch their 13th team championship and first since 2020.

In addition to Cornell winning at 126 and Easton Kemper at 190, Burns also took top honors with Liam Shepherd at 106, Canon Winn at 132, two-time champion Cannon Kemper at 150, and Joe Weil at 215.

Four other Burns wrestlers earned spots on the podium as the Highlanders scored 234 team points to runner-up Harrisburg’s 191.5.

Banks placed third with 116 points and Pleasant Hill was fourth with 115.

“This is where a lot of hard work pays off,” Burns coach Tyler Swartzlender said. “There aren’t too many nights where you go a perfect 6 for 6 in the finals and 8 for 8 with the girls. The kids earned it and they definitely made us all proud tonight.”

After finishing as the runner-up each of the past three years, the Hilanders were thrilled to finally punch through to the top.

“Harrisburg closed the gap in the placing rounds and it was up to our kids to see how they’d respond in the finals,” Swartzlender said. “They trusted their work, got the work done. And you might say after three runner-ups in a row, we’re doing stuff right. But it’s nice to take that last step and see the joy on the kids’ faces when they put it all together and win the team title, also.”

Cornell made quick work of Creswell’s Lyosha Mitchell in the 126 final, taking Mitchell off his feet and onto his back in 1:08.

So, how’s it feel to be a four-time champion?

“I won three others; it feels the same,” Cornell said. “I was never a state champion as a little kid, so being a high school state champ is pretty cool. That was definitely a good experience to have.”

Before the final, Cornall said he drew some inspiration from Floyd Paye, commissioner of the Central Oregon Wrestling Association.

“I was pretty nervous, but Floyd gave me some encouraging words to think about,” Cornell said. “He said, ‘If you wrestle like you’re going to lose, then you’re going to lose. But if you wrestle like you’re going to win, then you’re going to win.’ So, I wrestled like I was going to win.

“The match went just how I wanted. I didn’t care how fast or how slow it was going to be. I just wanted to win. That’s all I was thinking about.”

Cornell finished the season with a 36-5 record and a career mark of 170-19.

Easton Kemper clinched his fourth consecutive state title when he pinned Vale’s Wyatt Cox after only 54 seconds in a rematch of their District 4 final.

“I was pretty confident,” he said. “I’d already wrestled him before. I don’t know. Anything can happen, though. He’s a good kid, a good wrestler.

“It took a little while the last time, but I got him in an under-hook again and jacked him up. I was able to get his head locked up. It’s what I took him down with last week and pinned him, too — an inside leg trip straight to a cow-catcher. After that, I knew it was over.”

Easton Kemper won all three of his tournament matches with first-round falls, pushing his record to 36-4 on the season and 146-13 for his career.

“It’s incredible to have it behind me,” he said. “I don’t have to stress any more. But it’s nice — everything I could have asked for. It couldn’t have gone better.”

La Pine’s Devon Kerr and Landyn Philpott all put their names into the record books as four-time state champions.

Kerr scored a 13-2 major decision over Banks’ Benjamin Dinan in the 138 semifinal, and then he blanked No. 2-seed Tayson Truesdell of Harrisburg in the final.

“I feel like I’ve achieved my goal -- something that I’ve been working at every single day since I found out that I could fit in a pair of wrestling shoes,” Kerr said. “All glory goes to my family and God.

“I was so nervous going into the final. That was the hardest state match I’ve ever wrestled … the hardest wrestler I’ve ever wrestled in the finals. He deserved to be there with me, but at the end of the day, I was the better one.”

Kerr competed with an injured left rotator cuff — an injury he sustained during the Rollie Lane Invitational in Nampa, Idaho in early January — yet persevered through the pain to finish his season with a 42-4 record and a career record of 158-17.

At 144, Philpott’s run to a fourth state title ended with a pair of first-round pins. First, he stopped South Umpqua’s Sylis Williams after 44 seconds in the semifinals. Then he put second-seeded James Turner of Banks away after 49 seconds in the final.

“It’s been a dream since I was little,” said Philpott, who also admitted to some “mixed emotions” heading into the final.

“I’d get nervous and then I’d get really confident,” he said. “And then right before I hit the mat I got really confident and knew I had it in me.”

Philpott went 4-0 in the tournament with four first-round pins, finishing the season with a 51-2 record and a 180-20 career record — one of only 17 wrestlers in Oregon prep history to reach the 180-win mark.

“It’s pretty crazy, you know,” Philpott said. “Freshman year I was like, ‘Yeah, I won state.’ Now, I’m a four-time champion and it feels amazing.”

2A/1A Boys

Before the Culver Bulldogs left for the state wrestling tournament, there were already 13 first-place trophies in the trophy case.

On Friday night, they picked up No. 14.

Culver’s Braden Nielsen at 113, Carlos Fernandez at 138 and Leland Minson at 165 finished second in their respective weight classes as the Bulldogs clinched another OSAA Class 2A/1A team title, finishing with 158 points to runner-up Oakridge’s 137.

Lowell finished third with 104.5 points, and Heppner was fourth with 67.

How does a team win a state championship without a single individual title?

It helped that Culver qualified 15 wrestlers to the state tournament — six more than Oakridge and nine more than Lowell. And of those 15 wrestlers for the Bulldogs, 12 contributed in the team scoring, including eight who found their way onto the podium.

“It’s a strange one to win a state title without a champ,” Culver coach JD Alley said. “It just shows a lot of depth and a lot of integrity of some of those kids who had their dreams crushed and didn’t make it to the finals or whatever to bounce back.

“Those two rounds this morning on the consolation side were really, really good for us. That’s what did it.”

Those efforts included third-place finishes by senior Cole Rahi at 132, sophomore Noah Corey at 144, freshman Max Dickson at 165, and sophomore Coby Holmes at 215. The Bulldogs also scored with a fourth-place finish by junior Bridger Fosmark at 132.

“Hats off to Oakridge,” Alley said. “They punched five of their six wrestlers in the semis into the finals, but that didn’t leave a lot on the back side and we were just able to win more matches than them.

“I love this group, but I knew what was out there in the state and it didn’t matter. We had some awful tough kids. It just seems like by the numbers there were tougher kids elsewhere and it was going to be really, really hard to win a championship.”

The Bulldogs also finished first with almost the same group of wrestlers that finished 12th in last year’s team race

“This has been a fun year for us and a little bit of a redemption tour,” Alley said. “We won the Classic, we have a set of league duals and we won that title, we won our district, and we won this. So, you can’t take much more away from us. We won all the big ones.”

Oakridge senior Kayden Tiller took top honors at 150 for his second individual state title. Rowdy Williams (138) and Lee Brainard (190) also placed first for the Warriors, while Everett Palanuk (106) and Jonavin Keller (132) added second-place finishes.

Lowell senior Harley Hardison won by a 13-4 major decision over top-seeded Taylor Parsons of Grant Union/Prairie City to clinch a third consecutive individual title.

Lowell’s Paul Clark also placed first at 175, while Henry Coiner finished second at 150 and David Finch finished second at 285 for the Devils.

Illinois Valley junior James Conn secured a second individual state title when he scored a 16-0 technical fall over Colton’s Justin Kilman in the 120 final.

4A/3A/2A/1A Girls

When the defending champion La Grande Tigers qualified 11 wrestlers for this year’s state tournament, the plan was to push a few into the finals, grab at least one individual titles as they did a year ago, and go home with another blue trophy.

That didn’t happen.

This time, La Grande came up with no individual titles — not one — yet the Tigers still did enough in Friday’s closing rounds to secure a second consecutive 4A/3A/2A/1A girls team title at Portland’s Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

La Grande relied on second-place finishes by Paige Allen at 145 and Maddie Armstrong at 190, plus third-place finishes by Lyndee Isaacson at 120 and Sydnee Azure at 125 to outscore Oakridge 98-92.5 for the team title.

Harrisburg placed third with 73 points and Crook County was fourth with 65.

“I think it’s special, even more so this time around,” La Grande coach Rusty Gulzow said. “Last year, it was kind of an overwhelming force, showing up with the 13 girls that we did and they kind of believed they had it in the bag. Not in an arrogant way, but knew that they could push through and do it.

“This tournament, with the strength of the Oakridge girls, putting four into the finals and battling it out with Harrisburg … it’s just, the competition is fantastic and our team was able to get it done without an individual state champion. 

“I think that’s a testament to how they battled through. We had only four girls left on the second day. And each of them had a near-perfect streak all day long getting through.”

Starting on the consolation side, Isaacson, the defending state champion, first scored a 12-0 major decision over Scio’s Kayla Borregard in the semifinals. She then went up against Cottage Grove’s Allison Palluck, another former state champ and the girl she’d lost to in Thursday’s quarterfinals, and pinned her in the third-place match.

Then there was Azure, who advanced through the consolation semifinals by forfeit and then won her third-place match with a pin over Echo’s Averi Fisher.

On the championship side, Allen won her semifinal against Elgin’s Bailey Hasbell with a pin, but then was no match for Creswell’s Chantell Noffsinger in the finals.

And, finally, Armstrong won by a 15-6 major decsion over Douglas’ Sialafua Polamalu in the semifinals, but lost 7-0 to top-seeded Megan Wells of Burns in the finals.

“We’re used to trying to put it together on day one and putting up a lot of points and overwhelming people,” Gulzow said. “The on the second day, we can focus on getting people through in the place rounds and take some of the pressure off of them so they don’t feel it’s on them.

“But I feel like a lot of things didn’t go our way Thursday and that caught up to some other teams today. You can put girls in and feel like you’re in a good spot and then the next thing you know, you’re losing three out of four matches.”

The girls game has come a long way in a short time.

“This shows how tough it is,” Gulzow said. “Macali Lade from Siuslaw at 120 is just absolutely tough. Taylor Echeverria from Crook County has been tough all year at 130. The two Burns’ girls, Hadley Gunderson and Megan Weil, they’re fantastic.

“Some of these teams that have two or three girls, those two, three girls are just absolute, lights-out champions. And I think it shows the parity that exists when we have a 2A school in Oakridge that’s putting four girls into the final. That’s an amazing testament to the sport that you can grow that sort of thing in a small school district and a small pool of people to draw from.”

Oakridge was still within striking distance of La Grande, trailing the Tigers 98-88.5 heading into the finals.

When Oakridge’s Vanessa Keller won the 110 final with a 7-3 decision over Harrisburg’s Paxton Steele, drawing the Warriors four points closer to the Tigers.

But then things went south for Oakridge. Emmalee Brissett dropped a 9-7 decision to Gunderson of Burns at 115. Victoria Keller lost by fall to Lade of Siuslaw at 120. And, finally, Kali Williams lost by a 5-4 decision to Echeverria of Crook County at 130.

A tough way to end, but maybe a harbinger for 2026?

“It was a great tournament. We just loved every second,” Oakridge coach Dan Niblett said. “I think one more year. We still have no seniors. We’ve got great ones coming back, great ones coming in. We’re going after the title next year.

“We wanted top three and we ended up second, so now it’s time to elevate.”

The girls tournament ended with a stunner as Mazama junior Lizabeth Henderson upset three-time defending champion Mallory Lusco of Grant Union 5-3 in the 235-pound final.

Trailing 3-0 with 10 seconds remaining, Henderson tied the match with a takedown and then pushed Lusco onto her back for a two-point near fall as time expired.

“She just got knocked off her base and I was able to capitalize off of it,” Henderson said. “She was on her knees and I was able to push her back and get those back points, which saved me.

“The feeling I have right now is astronomical. I’ve never had a feeling like this. I feel completely on top of the world.”

Henderson and Lusco spent most of the match on their feet, leaning into one another forehead-to-forehead, neither looking to take a shot. Lusco got a point for an escape in the second round, another point for another escape in the third round, and a third point on a stalling penalty as the two waltzed out of bounds with 10 seconds left.

What was Henderson looking to do that whole time?

“I was hoping that she would lean too far and I could get a knock bye and get a knee pick,” Henderson said. “That didn’t work out for me and, honestly, I think I just got lucky. But I was able to capitalize on her mistake.”