Probably the best thing that happened last year to South Tahoe High's Mike Crouse was not making the state tournament. It just took some time for him to realize that.

"I guess I'm using that as motivation for this year," said Crouse, a sophomore. "I am much more hungry this year. I'm a little nervous just because it's my first time at state, but I've got a lot of adrenaline flowing through me right now. "

Crouse, who missed qualifying for state by one spot last season, now enters state with something to prove. Crouse, who was the runner-up in the 103-pound division at last weekend's Northern 4A Regional Tournament, faces Palo Verde's Glenn Terrano today in the first round of state at the Winnemucca Indoor Event Center.

Should he win, Crouse would then wrestle in the quarterfinals later on today. If he loses, his season is over.

"He's really focused and ready to go," said first-year coach Ken Robbins, who has been encouraging Crouse to practice twice a day this week. "Once you've gotten to this point, you might as well spend all your energy. There's not a tournament next week."

Crouse admits he knows little about Terrano, but figures he will be similar in style to other southern Nevada wrestlers.

"I heard that he is pretty good but that if you're rough with him he will fold," Crouse said. "I'm going to come out of the gate and blast him, try to be real aggressive. I think it's important to come out aggressive and try and get to that final match."

The single-elimination tournament includes a nine-person field that starts off with a pigtail match this morning before the final eight wrestlers begin their first-round matches at 2 p.m. The consolation finals and championship round are on Saturday.

"It's win twice and you're in the finals," Robbins said. "It's basically an eight-man tournament because one kid gets eliminated right away in that pigtail match. But everyone feels they have a good chance to medal and everyone probably has a good reason to feel that way. That's the way you should approach this thing and I can tell you Mikey is doing just that."

While completely focused on his first match, Crouse also knows that Carson's Owen Craugh, his newly created rival, is on the other side of the bracket. Crouse, who has lost twice to Craugh this season and has only beaten him once in the past three years, would love to see them meet in an all-Northern 4A championship.

"They're rating Owen as one of the top guys down there and Mikey has had him beat twice this season, "Robbins said. "He had him beat both times they wrestled until the last 30 seconds of the third period. You always have your kind of arch nemesis and Mikey knows his. He'd like to get that monkey off his back."

Crouse had to wrestle with a bulky brace at regionals because of a hyperextended elbow suffered two weeks ago. He will wrestle with a brace this weekend but will use a much smaller one that should allow him to turn guys more easily.

"It's not as big and it'll allow me to be more mobile," Crouse said. "It kind of hurt me at regionals because guys were going after it. I just wanted to eliminate that being a factor at state."

While making it to the state tournament any year could create symptoms of nervousness, Robbins has been tempering those emotions for Crouse by reminding him of his own experience when he was in prep wrestler in Missouri.

"As a sophomore at a state tournament, I can only tell you how I felt since I was lucky enough to wrestle as a sophomore at state," Robbins said. "You got the butterflies and everything going around inside you because there are older wrestlers. But this will be the first time for anybody in state to be wrestling in Winnemucca. It's a new gym that's unfamiliar for everyone there. I think Mikey's got a great chance to medal."