The Jackson County Mat Panthers had a couple of solid showings leading up to the Christmas break.
The Mat Panthers will next return to action on Jan. 2, when they’ll travel to Hart County to take part in the Georgia-Carolina Classic.
Last Tuesday, the Mat Panthers faced off against West Hall and Morgan County at home. Jackson County split the match, falling 42-31 to West Hall and defeating Morgan County 2-27.
Winning twice on the night was Zack Moore, Ryan Shekey, Izzy Carillo-Garcia, Charles Smothers, Ryan Howe and Austin McDonald.
“We should have never lost to West Hall,” Powers said. “We ended up having three guys out of the line-up due to various reasons. We didn’t wrestle very well as a team. That’s one thing that we discussed. We ended up coming up short. We can learn a lot from the match, as far as learning how to wrestle as a team. When one person doesn’t step up and get their job done, it affects the entire team.”
Things went differently against Morgan County, Powers said.
“We really wrestled well against them, winning the first six straight matches.”
The team next traveled to Loganville to take part in the Eric Hill Memorial, where they came away with a fifth place effort out of 18 teams competing.
Jackson County trailed only Loganville, Ola, Ft. Dorchester and Tift County.
Individual results included a second place by Ryan Shekey in the 125 lb. class, a second place by Izzy Carillo-Garcia in the 140 lb. category, a third place by Tre Horton in the 135 lb. category, a third place by Charles Smothers in the 171 lb. class, a third place by Ryan Howe in the 189 lb. category and a fifth by Austin McDonald in the 215 lb. class.
“It was an extremely tough tournament,” said coach Jason Powers. “I knew going in it would be. That’s one of the reasons I got into that tournament. I wanted to seek some good competition.”
For more on this story, see Wednesday's edition of The Jackson Herald or The Braselton News.
