Courtesy Photo The Alpena Wrestling team took second place at Rogers City on Tuesday. Leading the way was Jacob Barlow (back, left), Emery Zarins (back, right), Zach Auger (front, left) and Fabion Phillips (front, right). All four wrestlers went undefeated on the day.

ROGERS CITY — The Alpena wrestling team continues to show improvement under new head coach Matt Hepburn. Despite being low on numbers in certain weight classes, Hepburn and assistant coaches Mike and Gabe Howard look to have the Wildcats heading in the right direction.

On Tuesday Alpena traveled to Rogers City to compete in the Bill Barrett memorial tournament against Sault Ste. Marie, St. Ignace and the host Rogers City Hurons.

The meet began at 9 a.m. and ran throughout the early stages of the afternoon. Alpena took on Sault first, followed by Rogers City and finished up with St. Ignace.

The Hurons started with St. Ignace and ended with Sault. Rogers City coach George Sobeck and his team played host to its annual holiday tournament.

The tournament is name for the late Bill Barrett who is known as the “father” of the Rogers City wrestling program.

The event first started as the Rogers City invitational, but was later changed in 2001 by Pat Lamb who was head coach of the Hurons at the time. Lamb renamed the tournament to honor Barrett who was his mentor for many years.

The Wildcats earned a second place finish thanks to an undefeated day from four of their wrestlers. Jacob Barlow (145), Emry Zarins (160), Fabian Phillips (171) and Zach Auger (285) all went undefeated throughout the day to lead Alpena to the second place finish.

“We wrestled very hard and very smart. The fact that we did not have any lower weights really hurt us,” Hepburn said.

Alpena finished second to St. Ignace who took home first place honors in the annual memorial tournament on Tuesday morning.

“We have a strong team, but we just have to try and fill our holes in the linuep. Our underclassmen are starting to come together and get a grasp on the competition and really one of the main things we need right now is more time to work on things and continue the improvement,” Hepburn said. “Moving forward, if we are able to fill some of those holes and continue getting better in the areas that we need to improve on, I truly think that we could be a team to contend with and be very good by the end of the season.”