Centennial High's Brian St. James looked as if he had just finished a boxing match after winning a wrestling state championship Saturday.
St. James had a chipped front tooth, fattened upper lip, and a cut along the bridge of his nose, among other woes.
He also had a first-place medal in his possession at Gwinnett Arena, after winning the Class AAAAA championship at 119 pounds.
The team winners at the Traditionals were Collins Hill (Class AAAAA), Alexander (AAAA), Gilmer (AAA), Jefferson (AA) and Bremen (A).
"I kind of like this look," St. James joked as he grinned, showing off the damaged tooth. "I might wait a week or two before I go the dentist. What do you think?"
Saturday was the final high school match for St. James, one of the more accomplished wrestlers in state history. He closed out his Centennial career with 109 consecutive wins, including a 52-0 mark this season.
In the finals, St. James defeated longtime friend Adam Wilson of Roswell High 9-1 to win his second state title in a row. The two competitors attended elementary and middle school together.
Centennial coach Don St. James, Brian's father, celebrated the win by hugging his son, then lifting him in the air. Brian, however, playfully slapped his father in the head, instructing him to stop.
"It was great to win, but I didn't want to celebrate too flashy with [Wilson] being my friend," Brian said.
St. James suffered the nose injury against Wilson, and busted up his mouth the day before in the semifinals against Cherokee's Cole Anderson. It was such a bloody mess that it threatened to medically disqualify him from this weekend's tournament.
In the first five seconds of the match, St. James pushed Anderson's head to the ground, but then Anderson sprung up quickly, inadvertently hitting his opponent in the face. The match was halted as blood poured out of St. James' mouth.
"The tooth shattered into my mouth, but that wasn't a big deal," St. James said. "The big problem was that I had to stop the bleeding within five minutes or I could've been [disqualified because of injury]."
Normally, St. James would've been fitted with a mouthpeice. However, he has been sidelined for most of the past month with asthma problems, and the mouthpeice made it more difficult to breathe during matches.
"It may look bad," St. James said, pointing to his face, "but I'm fine. It doesn't hurt at all."
It was a special father-son moment for the wrestler and his coach Saturday. The elder St. James wrestled at Georgia before it disbanded its program in 1980 and has been coaching at Centennial for 14 years.
During the finals, the coach was intense, sitting on the edge of the match yelling strategy. A few times, Brian gave his dad a quick glance, as if to say "Dad, not so loud."
"It's weird having your son wrestle; sometimes you feel like it's you out there," Don St. James said. "As a coach, I'm confident and just fine during the matches. As Brian's father, I get nervous like any other parent.
Brian appears to be the opposite of his father, about as cool and calm as they come.
"We've had some tough times, but I'm glad my father is my high school coach. He is harder on me than the other wrestlers on the team. But hey, that's part of what got me where I am today."
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