GRAYLING — The Iron Mountain varsity wrestling team was nearly perfect Saturday at the MHSAA District 17-3 individual tournament at Grayling, with 10 of the 11 Mountaineers competing battling their way to advance to the regional tournament in Charlevoix on Feb. 19.

The team’s success Saturday included winning five weight divisions, four second-place finishes and one third-place effort. The top four finishers in each division advance to the regional tournament.

And, in three different weight classes, Iron Mountain grapplers battled each other for top honors.

At 103 pounds, Mountaineer Alex Wilson (28-8) pinned teammate and reigning Mid-Peninsula Conference champion Shayna Hruska (27-6) in the third period of their championship match.

Shawn McGuire (31-2) then faced and beat fellow Mountaineer Tyler Winch (26-12) in a 4-2 decision to take first place at 119.

And the medal round at 152 featured yet another Mountaineer-Mountaineer clash, with Parker Stroud (33-6) topped teammate Mason Kivi (19-6), who ceded the match by a medical forfeit, as the two Iron Mountain wrestlers placed 1-2 in the weight class.

Coach Cory McLaren said it’s not as unusual as one might think to have teammates battling each other.

“Kind of, kind of not,” McLaren said. “It happens a lot more downstate where you might have more kids on a team.

“Watching them wrestle each other isn’t fun, because you can’t really cheer,” he added. “But it’s good because we have the top two wrestlers in three weight classes.”

And McLaren said there were no hard feelings between the Mountaineer teammates after they walked off the mat.

“No. They do this every day at practice. They get better by pushing your teammates,” he said, adding his team is in high spirits. “They’re feeding off of what happened this weekend.”

Iron Mountain’s Isaac Manier (34-5) and Fulton Stroud (27-4) also won individual district titles at 140 and 171, respectively, while Evan Haferkorn (32-5) lost a 8-5 decision to Bark River-Harris’ Dillon Raab (28-2) in finishing second at 145 and Daniel Manier (24-10) took third at 125.

Iron Mountain added the individual medals to the Division 4 trophy it earned just days earlier at the team district at Gwinn last Wednesday, where the Mountaineers first topped Westwood 54-24 and then dominated Ishpeming 48-18 in the title match.

The Mountaineers’ recent team and individual success sets up a busy schedule for the squad that will travel to Charlevoix this Wednesday for a team regional tournament, where the Mountaineers will face Bark River-Harris/North Central. The winner will face the top team in the regional’s other matchup between St. Ignace and host Charlevoix.

The Mountaineers then travel back to Charlevoix on Saturday for the individual regional event.

“It’s a hard week to prepare for,” McLaren said.

Dennis Mansfield can be reached at 906-774-2772, ext. 244, or at dmansfield@ironmountaindailynews.com.