The Jefferson Mat Dragons took their first step towards another state title by taking first in the 8-AA Region Duals at Riverside Military Academy Monday.
The Duals had originally been scheduled for the previous weekend, but was rescheduled to Monday and moved to Riverside due to icy weather in Fannin County, where the tournament had been originally scheduled to take place.
The Mat Dragons first defeated Oglethorpe, then Dawson County before facing Banks County in the finals, sending Jefferson to Macon this weekend for the State Duals.
Jefferson dominated the final match, taking the region title with an 84-0 effort.
“It was pretty good,” said coach Doug Thurmond. “I don’t think either one of us wrestled all of our first string. I know they didn’t in some points and we didn’t either. I think they were sitting on reserve wondering if Dawson was going to come back through, and I think they were going to keep themselves as strong and ready for Dawson.”
There was no need for a match to determine true second since Banks had defeated North Oconee, who later defeated Dawson County. Banks would take second, meaning a trip for the neighboring county to the State Duals next week. North Oconee took third and Dawson County took fourth.
Thurmond said what he enjoyed about the tournament was that he had a good chance for a lot of his kids to wrestle.
“We wrestled pretty much most of our Varsity and JV throughout the tournament,” he said. “Just about everybody on our team got a match, and everybody wrestled real well. We were proud of that.”
Thurmond said the win was a team effort.
“We’ve got some of our experienced wrestlers that are wrestling well right now,” he said. “We have some of our younger guys that are stepping up and doing a good job too. It’s pretty much a team effort at this point. We’ll kind of break away from that a little bit after this weekend, not that it’s not a team effort. If you’re going to win a state championship, whether it’s duals or traditionals, you have to have everybody running on all cylinders. It’s kind of a different situation this week say than in the several weeks following that.”
For more on this story, see Wednesday's edition of The Jackson Herald.
