The Jackson County Mat Panthers traveled to Hart County over the weekend to take part in the Georgia-Carolina Classic, an event they had won in 2008 and in 2009.
They had a good showing this year, but came up short on getting a third win in a row. Instead, the team went 3-2 on the weekend, finishing in fourth place.
Jackson County secured wins over Franklin County 67-12, Hephzibah 42-26 and Stephens County 44-24. They lost to Oconee County 48-30 and to East Jackson 43-26.
Ryan Howe was the only wrestler that went undefeated this weekend at 5-0. Howe suffered only one loss this season, and coach Jason Powers looks for him to be a dominant force in February.
Several wrestlers went 4-1 over the weekend, including Ryan Shekey in the 112 lb. category, Jacob Hyder in the 215 lb. class and Cole Meaders in the 130 lb category.
The Mat Panthers’ overall dual meet record for the season is now 10-8.
“This was not exactly the way I wanted to get the new year started off,” said coach Jason Powers. “We went into the weekend beat up and pretty sick and did not come out much better.”
Powers said the team’s senior captain, Kevin Spicer, was out for the tournament due to illness. A wrestler also failed to make the weight class he was supposed to wrestle in on Saturday morning, giving the Panthers another disadvantage.
“Due to these events we went into every match this weekend giving up 18 points due to forfeits,” Powers said. “It is extremely hard to win dual matches when you start a match at 0-18.”
Powers said given the circumstances heading into the tournament, he felt the team performed the best they did all season in the first three matches on Saturday.
“However, we did not wrestle very well in the last two matches and that resulted in the losses,” he said. “As I said earlier, if you are going to win a dual meet when you are giving up 18 points every wrestler must do their part in order for the team to win and that did not happen in the last two matches. We gave up too many pins and we did not get pins when we needed them.”
Adding to the two losses was the loss of Justin Brewer, the team’s wrestler in the 119 lb. class, to an injury for the rest of the season during the match against East Jackson.
Despite the weekend not going as had been hoped, Powers said the Mat Panthers’ ultimate team goal still lies ahead of them during this weekend with the Area Duals.
“Our line-up will be stronger than ever this week,” he said. “We will finally be wrestling with our true varsity line-up for the first time all year on Tuesday night and I think we are going to surprise some people. Even with two losses to Area teams and a very tough Eastside team ahead of us, I think we will make it to the state duals.”
The Area Duals will be a round robin format, so the Panthers will wrestle every team in their Area over the weekend. They will have to avenge their losses to Morgan County and Oconee County in order to make it to the State Duals on Jan. 16.
“I think that this task is very achievable given the team that we are going into the tournament with, but it’s going to take a great effort out of the entire team and not just a handful of individuals.”
Jackson County was scheduled to host North Oconee and Madison County at Gordon Street on Tuesday. Results were unavailable at press time.
