SPARTANBURG, SC - The Boiling Springs wrestling team continued their winning ways this season and won their first tournament since 2016 when they won the Day at the Den wrestling tournament at High Point Academy on Saturday.
The victory improves the Bulldogs record to 16-0 after winning all five of their matches in the tournament. "It feels very good to win this championship as it has been a long time coming for this team," said Bulldogs head coach Lee Thomas. "There has been a lot of hard work put in and it's our first outright tournament win since 2016. It has been six years of hard work to get this group here now." Boiling Springs started their day off in pool play where they were able to come away with a 42-33 victory over Crescent to start the day and a 63-18 victory over Battery Creek. With the Bulldogs going 2-0 in pool play it advanced them to the gold medal bracket against High Point, Greer, and Ninety-Six. The Bulldogs started off medal bracket play against High Point where they came away with a 54-27 victory. The Bulldogs got pinfall victories in the match from Jason Blackwell, Peyton Hornack, Ayden Whisler, Trent Coppola, Xavier Goodman, JoJo Barrett, and Jacob Hill. In probably their biggest matchup of the day, the Bulldogs came away with a 36-30 victory over the 2A defending state champions Ninety-Six. "Ninety-Six is a great team no matter of classification and can wrestle with anyone in the state," said Thomas. Boiling Springs came away with pinfall victories from Luke Hillers Harrison Bradford, Jacob Dawkins. Dawkins came away with possibly the biggest win of the match as he was trailing 8-0 in points with just seconds left in the match before doing a reversal into a pinfall for a six-point victory in what could have been a four-point loss. "Jacob was losing there with thirty seconds left in the third period but was able to put himself in a spot to get the pinfall," said Thomas. "It was a huge momentum swing and a huge point swing that helped secure the victory." Ayden Whisler (9-3), Ty Nesbitt (9-3), Triston Ellison (2-0) and JoJo Barrett all captured crucial points victories in the match against Ninety-Six. Their final match of the day came against Greer, where the Bulldogs came away with a 68-12 victory for the win in the match and to seal their spot as the first ever Day at the Den champions. They got pinfalls from Peyton Hornack, Matthew Emory, Trent Coppola, Harrison Grice, Jonathan Cortes, Jacob Hill, Jason Blackwell, and Luke Hillers. Boiling Springs had two players named to the All-Tournament team as JoJo Barrett and Harrison Bradford both earned the honor on Saturday, as Barrett went undefeated on Saturday. The Bulldogs will look to carry their win streak into next week in a tournament at Mauldin before going on the Christmas break and Thomas says his team's success has helped with the team's commitment. "We've talked about that we had to learn how to win and in the last few years we hadn't been as successful as we had become accustomed to being," said Thomas. "So, we're having to provide our own energy to get better at practice. The winning streak is helping with that commitment level though and proof of that is yesterday for practice we had all but two of our 44 wrestlers show up despite kids not being at school yesterday." The Bulldogs will be back in action on Thursday when they travel to Mauldin for another all-day tournament, their last matches before the holiday break. Comments are closed.
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