In unusual and exciting fashion, the University of Wyoming Wrestling team qualified three individuals for the upcoming national championships and won the NCAA West Regional title on Saturday in Brookings.

A trio of UW sophomores won their brackets and earned automatic bids to the 2010 NCAA DI Wrestling Championships. Michael Martinez was the victor at 125 pounds, Shane Onufer at 165 and Joe LeBlanc at 184. The Cowboys also got a second-place finish from Cory VomBaur (133) and three third-place winners: Jimmy Belleville (157), Alfonso Hernandez (197) and L.J. Helbig (Hwt.).

As a team, the `Pokes came from behind and won the West Regional team title by a half point over the 24-time defending champion Northern Iowa Panthers. It is Wyoming’s first-ever West Regional team title and UW’s first tournament conference championship team since 1992.

The Cowboys concluded the event with 75 points, Northern Iowa had 74.5, North Dakota State (44.5) was third, followed by Utah Valley (43.5), Air Force (37.5), South Dakota State (29.5) and Northern Colorado (18.5). All seven Western Wrestling Conference teams competed at the event, making it in effect the league’s championship tournament.

Entering the final matches in the heavyweight division, the `Pokes trailed the Panthers by a half point. UNI’s Christian Brantley won his match, but so did UW’s Helbig, only Helbig pinned his opponent which gave Wyoming the necessary bonus points to jump in front of Northern Iowa to end the night.

The Cowboys and Panthers did battle all day long, with four head-to-head match-ups in the semifinals, two others for first place and one for third place. UW was 5-2 in those matches. Those bouts, along with some key consolation bracket wins and bonus points, helped Wyoming come from down 15 points after the semifinals and seven and a half points to UNI heading into the finals.

UW was hurt by some key losses to some of their high seeds in early matches, but also benefited from a penalty point deducted from UNI for poor sportsmanship after the 157-pound final.

“This is a bitter-sweet day,” Wyoming head coach Mark Branch said. “I feel that we wrestled about as poor as we could today and that is the reality. The good thing is that we walk away with the team championship, which was one of our goals this year. It is hard though, because I don’t believe we deserved it with our performance. I would trade the team title for a few more guys going to the NCAA Championships.

“The way that we train and my philosophy as a coach is to perform well on this weekend. Everything points towards that. To come out and wrestle poorly is disappointing. We trained too hard and too smart to let our opponents dictate the outcome the way they did today.

“There were some performances on our team that deserve thanks for getting this team over the hump and earning the West Regional trophy. Guys like Fonz (Hernandez), Jimmy and L.J. all showed some heart with the way they came back through the back-draw, earned bonus points and got some big wins.”