Rice, Benedict post wins for Bulldogs

Dalton Rice scored a pin for Whitefish in the opening round of a wrestling meet against rival Columbia Falls to set the tone for what should be a successful season for the 135-pound senior.

"Dalton coming out and getting the pin was a big confidence booster," Bulldog coach Ryan Hoff-man said. "He came out really aggressive. Hopefully, he can continue to build on that."

Tanner Benedict tallied the only other win for Whitefish, which lost the home meet 58-15. Eight of the 15 matches were forfeits by Whitefish.

Benedict, 171 pounds, wrestled in the most competitive pairing of the evening against the 'Cats' Joe Gross.

In the three-round match, Benedict scored four points in the first two rounds with a pair of takedowns and added another two points in the final round with a nice reversal for a 6-1 win.

"Tanner has wrestled Joe a few times in the past," Hoffman said. "Every time it's a close match. They wrestle a similar style."

Hoffman said he liked Benedict's ferociousness from the start of the match.

In the final paring of the night, Bulldog freshman Domonic Sargent took the mat for the first time against Kelly Houle, a 215-pounder for the Wildcats.

Houle pinned Sargent in 20 seconds, but Hoffman said he liked the courage shown by Sargent to take on the top-tier wrestler from Columbia Falls.

"I told him before the match, 'I want you to go out there and go forward. You know this kid's stuff.' I wanted to get him under the lights for the first time.

"We have a lot of young kids, and we just put them out there. That's part of the learning curve."

Hoffman said that overall, the team wrestled strong, but they need to work on their aggressiveness.

"We've got to get right mentally before each meet," he said.

The Bulldogs travel to Butte this weekend for the Butte Invitational.