North Putnam gets four decisions against Bruins

ROACHDALE -- North Putnam's wrestling squad, while still undermanned for a few more meets, hosted Tri-West Tuesday night.

While the team result was lopsided, due to five forfeits against the Cougars, it gave some first-year wrestlers an opportunity to square off with potential sectional foes down the line.

Only six of the eight available Cougars were in action Tuesday evening. Senior Tyler Ruble and sophomore Devan Attkisson picked up wins on the evening, along with forfeit wins for Dean Kleiber and Randall Cox.

At such an early stage in the season and under unusual circumstances, North Putnam head coach Kenny Kerns wasn't terribly worried about the results.

"Three out of eight guys had varsity experience coming into tonight, so we're alright. We're young and were going to make some mistakes, like tonight, but I'm excited about this group," Kerns said. "Everybody gets along well, they don't fight, they stop and help each other. It makes my job easier."

"I've got a bunch of upper classmen who say, 'Hey coach, I'm going to take this guy over here'. Okay, fine, go. It's kind of nice, like having five coaches out there."

Though still lacking in numbers for Thursday's four way meet at Plainfield, Kerns should have almost a full squad by Saturday's meet at Monrovia.

"Everybody will be ready to go except for three kids grade-wise. Saturday, I should have all weight classes filled except for 125, so 13 out of 14 weight classes. Still, we're young. Three-quarters of them have never wrestled before," Kerns said.

"We've got Danville, Plainfield, so there's sectional opponents, and Speedway's no longer in our conference. They're bigger schools, so we're going to see where we're at. I know we're going to be behind the other school on account of the young kids but this will be their third match, so they should be getting better," Kerns added.

"They showed some of that tonight, but we haven't wrestled in 10 days. We had a lot of rust tonight. Hopefully we'll have a good hard practice tomorrow and Thursday night it should be better."

At North Putnam

Tri-West 64, North Putnam 19

103 -- Ruble (N) dec. Boles (T) 8-6

112 -- Ward (T) pin Ruble (N) 3:13

119 -- Kleiber (N) forfeit

125 -- Ottinger (T) forfeit

130 -- Perry (T) pin Smith (N) 5:54

135 -- Ottinger (T) pin Fehr (N) :55

140 -- Attkisson (N) dec. Hill (T) 14 - 6

145 -- McGuiness (T) forfeit

152 -- Parient (T) forfeit

160 -- Swisher (T) forfeit

171 -- Kahl (T) dec. Foltz (N) 15 - 4

189 -- Branson (T) forfeit

215 -- Cox (N) forfeit

285 -- Staton (T) forfeit