By Jayson Jacoby

jjacoby@bakercityherald.com

Baker High School’s wrestling team finished fifth at the Class 4A state meet, the best finish in school history, but Coach Brandon Young wasn’t satisfied.

“We had seven state placers and still didn’t have enough points to bring home a state trophy,” Young said.

Which is not to say Young was disappointed with how the Bulldogs performed during the two-day meet at Portland’s Memorial Coliseum.

The Bulldogs, after all, led by Clay Keller’s individual state championship at 145 pounds, bested both of the school records they set just last year.

Fourteen wrestlers qualified for the state tournament, one more than in 2016.

And Baker’s fifth-place finish eclipses the school-best seventh-place mark set last year.

Baker’s Elijah Banister placed second at 132 pounds, and a trio of Bulldogs claimed third-place awards: James AhHee at 126, Korey Grende at 152, and Dylan Feldmeier at 160.

But Young said his team has ambitious expectations.

“We know what we’re capable of,” he said. “Our program is a whole now. We’ve got the Mat Club going. The middle school is feeding the high school program. We’re going to be tough for a lot of years coming.”

Young’s optimism is based in part on the number of experienced wrestlers he expects to return to the mats next season.

Of the 14 Bulldogs who competed in Portland this weekend, just four are seniors — AhHee, Grende, Feldmeier and Jace Hays, who placed sixth at 126 pounds.

As a way of measuring the program’s progress, Young pointed out that when that quartet of seniors were freshmen, Baker sent three wrestlers to the state tournament and failed to score a single point.

“This year we had 14 wrestlers and scored 132 and a half points,” Young said.

Among the wrestlers slated to return next season is Keller, a junior whose family moved to Baker City two years ago.

Keller, who finished the season with a 30-1 record, won Baker’s first individual wrestling state title since Heath Paxton’s in 2003 by pinning Sweet Home senior Jake Porter in what Young called “the most intense wrestling match I’ve ever seen.”

Young said Keller was thrown on his back in the first round, which put him in a 5-0 deficit early.

Keller narrowed Porter’s lead with an escape and a takedown later in the first round, and then tied the score at 7 in the third round.

Keller then got Porter in a bearhug before winning the match by pin.

“It was a dramatic come-from-behind win,” Young said.

(Keller could not be reached for comment in time for this story).

Banister nearly brought home a second state title for Baker.

He advanced to the championship match by beating Crook County’s Tyler Fioravanti in the semifinals, avenging a loss to Fioravanti in a dual meet against Crook County earlier in the season.

“That was his motivation,” Young said of Banister. “He really poured it on against (Fioravanti).”

In the title match Banister was pinned by Marshfield’s AJ Lira, the top-ranked Class 4A wrestler in the state at his weight.

“He’s at a different level,” Young said of Lira.

Baker’s Hudson Cole placed sixth at 220 pounds.