Move maker

The one thing you must remember when watching Dakota Lawson wrestle is that you cannot look away. Not that you want to – the East Valley High School 189-pounder has an aggressive style on the mat that makes his matches highly entertaining.

Glance at the scoreboard if you must, but make it a quick glance. Do not check your voicemail, don’t check for text messages and, by all means, do not get distracted by talking to your neighbor, the cheerleaders or anything else happening away from the wrestling mat.

Things happen fast when Lawson is on the mat. Rapid-fire moves and countermoves strung together like chains of popcorn on a Christmas tree. Nonstop action. Whatever happens, it happens fast.

“I do like to score a lot of points in a match,” Lawson said. “I don’t really think all that much about it, things just kind of naturally flow from one more to the next for me.”

A first-team All-Greater Spokane League linebacker for the Knights, Lawson has an explosive style – much the same as the way he played his position in football.

“Dakota likes to take chances when he wrestles,” East Valley coach Craig Hanson said. “That will, occasionally, get him into trouble. Most of the time he’s good enough to be able to recover when those chances don’t work out.”

Good enough to place in the last two state Class 3A tournaments. As a 160-pound sophomore he placed seventh. A year ago, at 171 pounds, he reached the semifinals before falling to Cody Pohren of Sedro Woolley on a third-period fall. He battled back to place fifth.

“Coming away with a couple state medals is good,” Lawson said. “But to be perfectly honest, I was disappointed with the way I wrestled at state. I think I should have placed higher both times.”

This year, Lawson, who naturally weighs in at 181, moves up in weight.

The way the state’s sanctioned weight classes break down, the largest gap, 18 pounds, is between where Lawson wrestled last year, 171 pounds, and his new weight class: 189.

“I feel really light,” he said. “It feels like I’m giving up a lot of weight and the competition is a lot stronger at 189 than it was at 171.

“But it makes it a lot easier getting ready for a match. I don’t have to worry about cutting to make weight. I can eat what I want and that makes a huge difference in the amount of energy you have going into a match.”

Lawson reached the 189 final at Tri-State, where he was stopped by the defending state 171 champion, 7-0.

“I wrestled him last year in a tournament,” he said. “I didn’t score on him then, either.”

His coach sees plenty of potential for Lawson’s senior season.

“You know, Dakota has a real good shot at winning it this year at 189,” Hanson predicted. “That guy he wrestled in the finals (at Tri-State), Jake Swartz from Auburn, isn’t going to be in our division when we get to state. Auburn went up to Class 4A this year.”

Just getting to the Tri-State tournament took some fast work. With schools closed due to heavy snowfall, coaches need waivers from the school to arrange for their own transportation as well as parental consent to travel in private vehicles.

“It took a lot of work to get that done,” Hanson said. “Not everyone could do that, so it was a smaller Tri-State tournament than in years past. But we were able to get our whole squad there for the tournament. It was a pretty good tournament for us.”

Tournaments are a way of life for area wrestlers. The Knights head to Nevada for a major tournament this coming week. After the first of the new year, it will be a steady diet of GSL dual meets during the week, with tournaments on the weekend, including East Valley’s own Dream Duals tourney.

After that, Lawson will have decisions to make.

As a standout at two sports, he has plenty of options for playing collegiate sports.

“I think that, if you asked Dakota, he’d tell you that whatever sport he was playing at the time would be his favorite sport,” Hanson said. “He’s a unique kind of a kid – a character-plus kind of kid who has the talent to play at the next level in several sports. It might be a little easier for him to play college football because there are certainly more opportunities for that than there are for wrestling. But he has the talent to make a place for himself as a college wrestler.

“I think if he were in a college program right now, he’d be a natural collegiate 174-pounder. He just fits that weight and he fits it right now.”

“That’s pretty much the case,” Lawson said. “Right now I’m really into wrestling. But if I had to choose right now, I’d choose football. I’m thinking about going to a junior college to play football and see where that takes me.

“But I could change my mind.”