The weariness of going against themselves in practice ended for the Greyhound wrestlers on Saturday outside Augusta as they placed second in their championship pool of the Harlem Kickoff Invitational after going 2-0 in preliminary matches.
“Our guys have been practicing hard all summer and have been wrestling each other a lot the last few weeks,” Greyhounds head coach Adam Gillhouse said. “We wrestle so physical in practice, so they were tired of wrestling each other. They were ready to go beat up on someone else. We got to wrestle five times, so that was good.”
That success came thanks to multiple wrestlers stepping up during the day, as Arrie Martin and Luke Thompson went 5-0 with 4-1 marks being turned in by Dawson Walker, Hunter McCleskey, Noah Pieterick, Nate McDaniel, Hunter Pittman and Nate Wilson.
Included in that success – middle school wrestlers making their first foray to the high school level of wrestling.
“Our middle school coaches do such a good job getting them ready. The speed and physicality is so different. A lot of stuff you can get away with in eighth grade, you can’t on this level. Each of them got at least one win, so that’s big for confidence.”
After wins of 77-0 against Harlem and 59-24 over Grovetown, the Hounds moved into the tournament’s gold pool. There, JCHS bounced back from a loss to highly regarded South Effingham to knock off Harlem 53-24 and 43-26 against Oconee County to take second.
“It was good to bounce back and wrestle hard,” Gillhouse said.
In the win against Oconee, the Greyhounds rallied. After taking two match wins early on by Hunter Pittman and Arrie Martin before dropping three, Jones County would go on to answer three losses in a row with six straight of their own by Barrett Rosenberger, Luke Thompson, Dawson Walker, Hunter McCleskey, Noah Pieterick and Nate McDaniel.
“Arrie had a great day, Hunter got hurt in our last dual and fought through it and finished. If he had not finished, we would have lost that dual. That ended up being the difference between finishing second and third.”
That followed the win against Harlem with wins coming by McDaniel, Hunter Pittman, Nate Wilson, Shooter Lumley, Martin, Thompson, Rosenberger, Walker, McCleskey and Pieterick.
The Greyhounds wrestle again on Saturday at the Raja Bryan Memorial tournament at Ola.
