Placed on a shelf in the Greyhounds’ wrestling room are a collection of trophies with one common thread. All of them have been earned as a team through the past four years, but all of them are of the region runner-up variety.
On Friday, the Greyhounds head to Locust Grove with their eyes fixed on something greater - a first place trophy.
Jones County takes the mat Friday morning in Locust Grove in the Region 2-AAAA duals. The goal by the end of the day is simple: to win the tournament that will also award berths in next week’s state duals to the top two finishing teams.
“We feel like we have a good shot to go up there and compete at a high level,” Greyhounds head coach Adam Gillhouse said. “Our message has been that our goal is to peak at the right time, and we’re at that point of the season where it is time to do that.”
Jones County will begin Friday’s action in a dual match against McDonough, with the winner of that match drawing the winner of Locust Grove and Woodland in the semifinal round. The duals format, one in which individual matches in each weight class earn points against the opposing team, is one where JCHS will be intent on preventing history from repeating itself. Last year brought a rarity for the Greyhounds wrestling program as it was unable to place in the top two of the region, falling short of state duals.
“The expectation for our guys is that, to not make state duals, that’s something for them not to even fathom,” Gillhouse said. “Last year was a one-off.
We definitely were not excited about that.”
In order to win a region title, Jones County will likely have to go through Ola, one of the state’s top teams regardless of format. The Mustangs won a traditional state title last season. In the duals format, Ola was a semifinalist last year and runner-up the season before.
“Ola is obviously a really good team. They’ve won a lot, and we have a lot of respect for them,” Gillhouse said. “They’ve been the standard in our region, but we feel like we have guys in some key places and can make a run and wrestle well.”
One thing that JCHS is banking on to help wrestle well is what the Greyhounds were able to accomplish last weekend when they took part in a quad match with Wesleyan, Dacula and Kennesaw Mountain.
The format was well-timed for Jones County, as the Greyhounds have wrestled the last few matches in traditional formats as opposed to duals. That’s why the focus was not so much any final score but working on details and adjusting the mindset to the format that awaits on Friday.
“It was good to get our guys back in a mindset of wrestling a dual meet, because we had not done that in a while,” Gillhouse said. “To be able to do that coming out of the holidays, it was good.”
