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Thursday, February 15, 2007
Don’t count winners before they pin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The AJC’s Kurt Aschermann Jr. talks H.S. wrestling each Thursday. Feel free to talk back.
Once a wrestling tournament the size of Georgia’s Traditional State gets going, the favorites are easy to spot and the brackets are easy to fill out.
Or so it seems. During the tournament’s opening hours, a number of upsets took place, most notably four big ones in Class AAAA. Eastside’s Jamarcus Griggs got it started, breaking up the 119-pound field with a shocking pin in 3:47 of Area 7-AAAA champion Michael Temple of Ringgold. Another area champion fell at 130 pounds as Brunswick’s Jeremy Stevens ended up on the short end of a 12-10, overtime decision against Sequoyah’s Skyler Mallchok.
Eastside was on the other side of two upsets, at 160 and 215 pounds. First, Tim Sloan fell to upstart Keith Glaze of Creekside. Glaze was impressive in four bouts at the Area 2-AAAA tournament and carried that over into a first-round victory.
East Paulding’s Austin Woityra provided the final shocker of day one, pinning Eastside’s highly-regarded 215-pounder, Ardest Carter with a pin in 4:23. Woityra, one of only four Raiders to make it out of brutal Area 5-AAAA, won the match despite trailing 15-8 in the third period and not being fully recovered from a hyper-extended elbow. Woityra and East Paulding coach Gerald Braun felt a Carter injury timeout in the third period was the difference.
“After his injury time out I got my wind back and I think he was worn out,” Woityra said. “I have one goal and that’s to place; it’s not about who I wrestle.”
“[The injury timeout] slowed things down,” added Braun. “[Carter] had nothing in him.”
With roughly 36 hours of wrestling left this weekend, conventional wisdom has it another handful of upsets are on the way.
Wrestling writer Kurt Aschermann Jr. ranks the top pre-state tournament wrestling teams in the state, regardless of class: Week of Feb. 15 (last week’s ranking in parenthesis)
1: McEachern (1)
2: Collins Hill (3)
3: Walton (4)
4: Parkview (2)
5: Stockbridge (5)
6: Gilmer (6)
T-7: Cass (T-7); West Laurens (T-7)
9: Jefferson (9)
10: Union Grove (11)
11: Harrison (10)
T-12: Lafayette (T-12) / Eastside (T-12)
On the cusp: Whitewater, Wesleyan, Henry County, Cherokee, Camden County, Murray County, Grayson, Alexander, Hardaway, Bowdon, Lovett, Northwest Whitfield, Brookwood, Westminster, Blessed Trinity, Tucker
Pin it down and rank the rankings: Let us know who your Top 12 are and how they stack up against Kurt’s picks.
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