Letters Home » Archive » Reser’s Tournament of Champions 2010

Hermiston's Bryce McMahon reaches for Brock Crocker's ankle in the 152-pound title bout Jan. 30 at the Reser's Tournament of Champions in Hillsboro. The junior beat his Sweet Home opponent 5-1. (Photo by Matthew Ginn/Trillium Media Services)

Shooting for a non-daily newspaper is different than shooting for a daily in many respects. On the positive side, for example, there is plenty of time to make the deadline. One of the disadvantages, though, is that I have to sit on some of my images for a few days until the paper has published them.

In the mean time, here are a few images that I can share from this weekend’s Reser’s Tournament of Champions in Hillsboro. (The first three are from the semifinal round, and the rest from the championship matches.)

The TOC is not as big a meet as the state championships, and it’s not even an official OSAA event. But it is better in one key respect: Unlike the state tournament and other regional meets, the TOC does not separate schools into classes based on their size (e.g. 6A, 5A, etc.). That puts some of the smaller schools at a disadvantage in terms of the team competition, but for the individual wrestlers they get to (or have to) get past everybody in their weight division.

This is the only opportunity for wrestlers at some of the smaller schools to compete head-to-head with some of their rivals from bigger schools.

Some might argue that since all of the schools in Oregon compete to go to the state tournament the wrestling is better than at the TOC, which is an invitational tourney. However, the TOC organizers do an outstanding job at identifying and attracting the best wrestling programs in the state. At the end of February, there aren’t very many state champions who didn’t compete at the TOC.

[Update: prints and downloads of these photos and more from the 2010 Reser's Tournament are now available in the Trillium Media Services archive here: Reser's Tournament of Champions photos.]