By Pierre LaBossiere
Peninsula Daily News
FORKS — Luke Dahlgren lifted a weight off his broad shoulders this weekend.
Not just for him, but for his family.
Dahlgren won the state championship in the 285-pound 1A weight division at the Mat Classic this weekend, the latest Forks wrestler to come home with a state title. His coach joked about “lifting the Dahlgren curse.”
Dahlgren has been one of the top 1A wrestlers in the state for the past three years. And his older brother Jack was also one of the top 1A wrestlers. Jack finished second twice at the Mat Classic, but was never able to get a state championship.
Dahlgren had placed at state, finishing fourth last year, but also had not been able to win the whole thing.
“Last year, I was ranked first all year and came up short,” Dahlgren said. He felt he had underperformed in the postseason, “but this year changed that around.”
Jack even helped Luke in the weeks leading up to the Mat Classic. Jack went on to become an All-American wrestler at Grays Harbor Community College, but returned to Forks this year to help with the family business. He took what time off he could to help Luke practice the past couple of weeks as regionals were canceled and wrestlers around the state sat around for two weeks waiting to wrestle.
There’s no sibling rivalry here. After Luke finally broke through for a state title, winning his championship bout with a pin in just over two minutes, “[Jack] gave me a big hug afterward.”
It was a bit of a bittersweet championship. Dahlgren is a senior and is done with wrestling. He will be playing football next fall for Eastern Washington University. He didn’t think about this in the afterglow of winning a state title until long afterward.
“It hit me on the bus ride home [Sunday morning] that it was my last wrestling match,” he said.
Not only did Dahlgren have to wait a couple of weeks between matches, he didn’t get to wrestle much at the Mat Classic to begin with.
Because Dahlgren was a No. 1 seed and had some byes, he only got to wrestle a single match in the Tacoma Dome on Friday, and that was Friday night. And his match lasted a whole minute.
He was much busier on Saturday, when matches went until nearly midnight with the 32-man brackets that the state was forced to go to with the regionals cancellation. In the quarterfinals, he wrestled Jacob Newsom of Colville who he has become friends with and will be a teammate with on Eastern Washington’s squad next season. He was hoping to meet Newsom later in the bracket.
This was Dahlgren’s only year wrestling at 285 pounds. Last year, he wrestled at 220. He wrestled this year at 260, smaller than some of his opponents, but bigger than others. The important thing is, he had a devastating combination of both size and speed.
“I like the speed technique, but I also had the strength to go with it,” he said.
Dahlgren isn’t done playing sports for Forks. He competes in field events for the Spartans track team in the spring. Track is a fun, laid-back sport compared to both football and hyper-intense wrestling.
“It’s a nice sport to do [in the spring],” he said.
Dahlgren competes in throwing events such as shot put and discus. Last year, he placed 10th in the state in the discus and is hoping to improve on that showing this spring.
Forks had a solid all-around Mat Classic, finishing third, its best finish since 2014. Twelve Spartans placed with Dahlgren winning and Colby Demorest making it to the championship bout at 170 pounds.
