Offseason mode came to a close on Saturday for the Greyhounds on the wrestling mat, as a handful of early-season tournaments began with the Kickoff Classic Tournament in Harlem.
Jones County went 4-1 overall, winning the event’s bronze bracket.
The Greyhounds beat Grovetown 43-30 in their pool and lost to Evans 41-29 before rolling over the rest of the field in their later bracket, beating Putnam County 61-6, Mary Persons 60-18, and 72-6 against Cross Creek.
“It wasn’t a bad day; it wasn’t a great day. Obviously, we’d have liked to be in the gold bracket with a chance to win the tournament, but we feel like we got better in our time there, which was a big goal for us,” Greyhounds head coach Adam Gillhouse said.
Noah Pieterick and Nate McDaniel were among the tournament’s top performers. Not only did both register four pins, but their times needed to register a pin of 30:01 and 4:52 were the second-lowest times of all wrestlers in the tournament. Arrie Martin, Barrett Rosenberger, and Dawson Walker also had three pins for JCHS.
“We had some guys do some really good stuff across the board,” Gillhouse said. “There are things we can clean up and improve on for next week.”
Jones County wrestles on Saturday at McIntosh, leading up to a pair of bouts the week of Thanksgiving — the Gauntlet in Gray on Nov. 26 and the Main Street Gray Dual on Nov. 29.
“Everyone gets tired of competing against each other and pushing on each other,” Gillhouse said. “Being able to go against someone else, that’s always a good thing.”
