Sweeps & precedents

Two seasons ago, Ryan Klemp and his teammates set a gold standard for Lewiston High wrestling that is already proving difficult to match.

Klemp himself is matching it. He is now 2-for-2 in state titles in his prep career, and over the next couple of years he will try to become the first Bengal ever to complete a high-school grand slam.

But he sensed a difference last year in the state-meet experience.

The Bengals, coming off an extraordinary season, failed to repeat as Idaho 5A state champions, and Klemp's individual title at 152 pounds only partially filled the void of that disappointment.

"It's a lot more glorious when the whole team comes together and wins something as a group," he said before a recent preseason workout. "It's more of a feeling of accomplishment when everyone's involved."

With five state placers returning, including champs Klemp and Bryce Parson, Lewiston looks poised to improve upon last year's fourth-place showing and perhaps claim another championship. The team opens its season Saturday in a tournament at Hermiston, Ore.

Klemp, a well-spoken junior with a flair for math and takedowns, spent a good portion of his youth traveling to wrestling tournaments in various regions of the country and hauling trophies back to Lewiston.

Competing in the Cadet age class (15-16) at a prestigious national tournament last summer in Fargo, N.D., the quick 5-foot-8 wrestler placed third in freestyle and fourth in Greco-Roman, both at 145 pounds. His versatility, backed by a grade-point average in the mid-3s, will be a selling point in his efforts to land a scholarship from an NCAA Division I school during the next two years.

His father, Lewiston optometrist Dan Klemp, said he didn't take his own wrestling career beyond the prep level at Butte, Mont. But he had particular incentive to enroll his abundantly energetic son in a Clarkston youth wrestling club at age 6. Self-preservation.

"I would walk in the door and he would jump on me," he recalled. "We'd wrestle down the hallway, up the stairs, in and out of the bedroom. He would never let me through the door without trying to take me down."

His wife, Peggy, would howl with laughter, but she probably recognized the athleticism. Her brother, Jim Janhunen, was a safety for a Montana State football team that won a national I-AA title in 1976. Dan Klemp and another Janhunen boy were members of a prep wrestling program in Butte that stitched together a long streak of state team titles.

But Ryan Klemp is taking the family's mat exploits to a new level, both in terms of accomplishment and level of training.

From the perspective of the Klemps, the recent renaissance in LHS wrestling is a tribute not only to Bengals coach Dan Maurer but to a former Lewiston and Sandpoint prep wrestler, Joe Forsman, now living in Houston. After competing collegiately for Army, Forsman spent some time in the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley, assisting Maurer for a season at Lewiston High and eventually becoming dismayed by what he saw as a counterproductive rivalry between Little Guy clubs in the valley's two major towns.

So he founded a third entity geared toward high-level competitors, the Hells Canyon Wrestling Club, based in Clarkston but resolved to cross city lines and increase the number of skilled training partners at the wrestlers' disposal. The idea attracted not only Ryan Klemp but his father, who was happy to relinquish the coaching role he had assumed with the original Clarkston club.

Forsman "is the one that got them wrestling together," Dan Klemp said, "and realized that if they were going to be really good, they needed to partner up, be buddies."

Some of their parents formed a similar bond, eventually combining the enjoyments of travel with a communal effort to expand their sons' wrestling horizons during the summer. Hence the many tournaments in Nevada, Iowa, North Dakota.

Hells Canyon wrestlers, led by Klemp and Parson, now figure prominently on Lewiston High's roster. They include Johnny Kenyon, a three-time state runner-up, and Drake Randall, who was fourth last season.

On a team level, the Bengals' breakthrough came in February 2012, when they seized the first state wrestling championship ever for a north central Idaho school. Klemp was one of three LHS individual titlists, pulling out a 3-2 decision at 138 pounds.

Despite climbing two classes the following year, he made State look easy this time, winning three matches by fall before taking a 9-4 decision in the finals over the talented Kris McFarlane of Centennial.

No small feat, according to Maurer.

"There was probably only one person in the building who truly thought he was going to win," Maurer said. "And that was Ryan. He looked me in the eyes and said, 'Don't worry, I got this.' "

Characteristically, though, Klemp was frank about the pressures he felt that season.

"The first one, you're a freshman and no one really expects you to do anything," he said. "So you kind of have no pressure, and you can kind of set your own standards. When you come back your sophomore year, everyone expects something out of you. People are kind of after you because you have a name."

That will be even truer this season. Only two Bengals, Bob Maurer and Casey George, have captured three state titles, and George's quest for a four-year sweep was derailed his junior season in 2010, when he got upset in the semifinals and placed third.

"I think he got a little overconfident," Klemp said. "I definitely don't want to make that mistake."

In wrestling, overconfidence is less likely when team titles are at stake and individual goals assume an extra layer of urgency.

And that could be the case this season for Lewiston.

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Grummert may be contacted at daleg@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2290.