While many students traveled home for the Thanksgiving holiday last week, the SF State wrestling team traveled—in search of the best competition it could find.

Though the competition was good, the organization turned out to be poor.

The Gators took the six-hour trek to Oregon for the Best of the West Tournament only to find a disorganized event and were unable to finish the competition in the end.

“The management of the tournament was the poorest it’s ever been. It started an hour late, we wrestled until 11 p.m., and we still had guys competing and they just stopped wrestling,” said coach Lars Jensen. “We will not be back to this tournament.”

According to Jensen, the mismanaged tournament included putting wrestlers in wrong weight classes, putting a wrestler in a weight class without weighing-in, several delays, and ended with school officials stopping the meet in the middle of the consolation matches.

“Matt Mungo won five matches at 165 [pounds], Naveed [Bagheri] at 133 [pounds] was still in consolation. We had guys winning a lot of matches, but they said ‘we’re done, we’re not going to have this tournament any more’,” Jensen said. “I’ve never seen a tournament like that.”

Through the mess, Curtis Schurkamp took fourth place in the 125-pound division and Steve Franklin finished second in the heavyweight division, while as many as four other wrestlers had not finished when the meet was called off. Schurkamp finished 3-2 in the tournament and Franklin, through an array of forfeits and defaults, only wrestled in two matches, including the championship bout—a loss to Clayton Jack of Division I Oregon State.

“It’s probably a good thing that I lost [two matches] because I can work on some things in practice,” Schurkamp said.

The Gators didn’t have to travel nearly as far when they visited Stanford for another meet over the break this past Sunday.

Despite Stanford’s status as a D-I school, Jensen said he felt the Gators had enough talent to win this meet, but in the end the Gators fell 25-12 to the Cardinal.

The meet started with a Stanford win in the 197 pound match, but followed with consecutive wins by Franklin, after beating heavyweight Jake Johnson in a 5-2 decision, and Schurkamp, with a 10-4 decision at 125 pounds.

“Right now I’m trying some new things, trying to switch up my style, so it was a solid win,” Schurkamp said.

The Gators looked to build on the lead, but Naveed Bagheri lost in overtime after dominating much of the match.

Jensen says Bagheri pulled a hip flexor wrestling with an assistant coach the day before and suffered a dislocated finger in a roll around practice right before weighing in.

Sophomore Josh Nolan, wrestling for the first time this year because of injury, lost a tough match against Max Rosefigura at 149 pounds, 3-1.

The Gators ended up losing the next four matches including a couple close decisions and fell to the Cardinal 25-12.

However, Jensen felt his team was very close to winning their first match of the season.

“If you turn any of those two-point matches around then we’re in the ballpark with them,” said Jensen. “We were more competitive, but we just have to find a way to win the close matches.”

The travel continues for the Gator wrestlers as they are off to Las Vegas to compete with some of the best from around the nation in the Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational on Friday and Saturday.