All three high-school teams participated in the Callaway Duals at Callaway High School.
While the rain poured down in buckets outside, the action on two mats was going full-speed ahead inside as host Callaway, Troup, LaGrange and Harris County grapplers squared off.
Harris County came away the big winner of the day, easily capturing each of its three matches against the Troup County contingent.
Harris defeated Troup 48-32, LaGrange 57-24 and Callaway 54-12.
LaGrange picked up wins against Callaway 57-21, and its biggest prize of the meet was a win over rival Troup, 42-36.
Troup’s only win of the day came against Callaway, 57-3.
Troup will get a chance for payback on Jan. 22 when it hosts the county championship between all three county schools.
Callaway coach Kurt Napier was hopeful his team could make a better showing, but he insisted theh Cavaliers are improving while work still needs to be done.
“As a team, we didn’t wrestle as well as I’d like,” Napier said. “What it comes down to is we need to get a little more serious about practicing and focusing on the fundamentals and develop individually. We did have a few bright spots here and there.”
One of those bright spots all season has been junior heavyweight Brandon Sutton, who got a split on the day with a pin, but later lost be a single point against Harris County.
Things are particularly tough for Callaway, which was forced to leave six weight classes vacant on the day due to illness, injury or other reasons.
All of those matches had to be forfeited.
For Troup, there were also some bright spots as coach Chris Mitchem said.
“I think we’re improving. We just got to keep on improving,” Mitchem said. “We just need to get people back who have been sick. We still have some important people on our team who are still hurt. We’re still missing about five starters, but the young guys are stepping up.”
Winning multiple matches for the Tigers Thursday were John Meacham, Adam Love, Michael Mackfield and Adam Love.
LaGrange’s final match of the day was against rival Troup, and the two teams square off for second place.
“Overall the fight against Troup was really, really good,” LaGrange coach Scooter Weathers said afterward. “We wrestled hard, everybody was up cheering . I wish there was a bigger crowd, but there will be in January.”
Weathers referred to that upcoming county championship at Troup on Jan. 22.
There’ll be a lot of anticipation for the meet, especially after the county championship wasn’t held last year.
The Grangers were also able to wrestle some underclassmen against Harris County to help with experience.
“The Callaway match we came out and wrestled really well, but the Harris County match was the match we threw a bunch of young guys in and let them wrestle,” Weathers said. “We got beat pretty bad by them, but we threw about six or seven JV guys and they got to wrestle varsity and got them some experience.”
LaGrange had several multiple winners on the day including Garrett Godby, who won three matches in the 106-pound weight class, and Enrique Moody, Marquavious Tucker, Dexter Jones, Corey Morgan and Lewis Hyers, who all won two matches each.
“Corey Morgan (LaGrange) and Jonathan Scott (Troup) had a back and forth match which we won 18-15 and that was a real pivotal match,” Weathers said of the match at 170 pounds. “We got stuck at 120 and got pinned at 132 which was a shock. I didn’t expect Que (Marquavious Tucker) to get pinned. He just got caught and turned and got pinned, so we look up and we’re down 12-6.”
Weathers referred to the 120-pound match between Granger Jorderias Brown and Troup’s Dakota Wilson, and at 132 between Tucker and Adam Love, one of Troup’s most productive wrestlers this season.
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