Bruin Bloomer adds two more state wrestling titles for Baker

Bruin Bloomer added two more state titles in Redmond, pushing the Baker eighth grader to six state championships across the past two seasons and putting him on a pace few Baker County wrestlers have matched.

Bloomer won the 16-under freestyle title and the 16-under Greco Roman title at 144 pounds at the April 18-19 tournament. Those victories came just weeks after he won the Oregon Middle School State Wrestling Championships at 140 pounds in Albany, where Baker finished second as a boys team and had two individual state champions.

Coach Andrew Gettle called that March tournament a "landmark tournament" for Baker. He pointed to the kind of support that has helped turn the Baker wrestling program into a steady producer of state-level results, including year-round club wrestling, assistant coaches Ted Hilton and Coby Johnson, and Kyle Johnson of Eastern Oregon Elite.

Bloomer’s rise is notable because it has not come in just one style or one age group. Last year, as a seventh grader, he became an Oregon Wrestling Association triple crown winner in the 14-and-under division, taking state titles in freestyle, Greco Roman and folkstyle. Those wins came at 126 pounds, with the freestyle and Greco Roman titles in Newberg and the folkstyle crown in Redmond in January.

He has also tested himself outside Oregon’s borders. Bloomer later won the western regional freestyle championship at 126 pounds, beating wrestlers from 13 states and advancing to the national tournament in Iowa. He won that final by technical fall, 11-0, in 2 minutes and 10 seconds.

The pattern matters for Baker because Bloomer’s success has become a local benchmark rather than a one-weekend burst. A wrestler still in middle school has already proven he can win in folkstyle, freestyle and Greco Roman, move up in weight, and keep collecting championships as the competition gets stronger. For the Baker wrestling program, that kind of sustained production is rare, and Bloomer has become the name to watch as the pipeline continues to build.