SCMAT Exclusive Articles 2007-2008
With the 2007-2008 wrestling season in South Carolina arriving, SCMAT has the top coverage this year as part of an ongoing project to document the History of our sport. This is a banner year for our state because we will achieve the 40th year of high school wrestling being a sanctioned sport. In some regards it doesn't seem like a long time compared to other states that have had wrestling for years. But then again, the Super Bowl has only been around 41 years!! Arkansas just sanctioned high school wrestling to start next season. And Mississippi has not sanctioned high school wrestling yet. So, 40 years is quite an achievement. In case you're curious about the first state which recognized a state championship tournament? 1921 in Iowa. 1922 Indiana. With this year being the 40th anniversary year, we have some interesting topics to start covering in the next few weeks ... so look for these stories to unfold ... Robert Quinn must handle recovery from surgery to remove a brain tumor before possibly pursuing his 3rd state title .... did you know he would be the first 3x Heavyweight champ in state history? Two 4A freshman win state titles last year ... Jacob Mitchell and John Green ... a first in our state for 4A ... but how do freshman typically handle winning a state title? Only 8 wrestlers have ever made it to four state titles. Speaking of 4 state titles ... Dalton Harper, Jonathan Willard and Corbin Martin all go for #4 this year. South Carolina has never had more than 2 wrestlers reach the 4x time pinnacle in the same year ... will this be the first? One former SC wrestler with 3 state titles to his credit, Kyle Kimrey, takes over coaching the Irmo program. How does a star wrestler compare with other in state coaches and out of state coaches. You'd be surprised that some of the most successful in state coaches never won a state title! Though the top coaches in SC history arrived in the 70's from out of state ... can you name a few of them? And with 153 career wins T.T. Prayther of North Myrtle Beach is poised to possibly surpass the State record of 210 wins set by JC Oddo last season. But look out for Dalton Harper of Chesterfield who has 150 career wins and plans to make the chase for history the best in years. Will these two meet up at some point in the season, or will they be the feature match at the All-Star meet? And, speaking of Anniversaries, the All-Star match held at season's end will reach the 20th anniversary ths year ... and many coaches in bordering states wish they had a state All-Star event like our Coaches put on. Congratulations Coaches on this outstanding annual event! And we can not miss out on telling the story of Ike Anderson, the USA Wrestling Greco-Roman Developmental Coach for the last 10 years, who saw the USA capture the World title this summer!! Ike wrestled at Lower Richland and competed in the Olympics before his career coaching with USA Wrestling began. Did anyone else notice Newberry, Limestone and Spartanburg Methodist all ranked in their respective pre-season polls! After the fall of Clemson's wrestling program it appeared like our state would never recover from the impact of Title IX, and here we are with three relatively new programs cracking the top 20 in the nation ... and a number of the stars in each program are former SC prep standouts. For starters, those are some stories we will pick up ... look for those to start appearing here in the coming weeks.