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The 2024-25 wrestling season saw a change in fortune for the LaGrange Grangers. After years of not meeting the standards set by previous generations of wrestlers at LaGrange High, head coach Michael Pharis has the team believing again.

The Grangers sent just one wrestler to state last season in Pharis’ second season in charge of the program. This season, the team had six wrestlers qualify for state and two alternates. For five of the qualifiers, it was their first time making the big dance. 

“This is kind of the fruits of our labor,” LaGrange head wrestling coach Michael Pharis said. “You plant a lot of seeds and hope that the harvest is going to be bountiful right? Well, we planted those seeds a few years ago and we are now starting to see the harvest.”

Sophomore Mason Boykin led the way for the Grangers this season and finished fourth at state. As a freshman, he was the only Granger who qualified but was joined by a bigger cohort of Grangers in Macon this year.

“I’ve kind of adopted a big brother role,” Boykin said. “I have to watch what I’m doing at tournaments and how I act because I know there are kids on the team that look up to me.”

Boykin, like his teammates, is hungry for a state championship next season. Boykin is knocking on the door, having narrowly lost his semifinal match this season. 

“Qualifying is just the start, it is not really what we are aiming for,” sophomore wrestler Christian Black said. “It was nice to qualify, but it doesn’t mean all that much if you don’t perform at state.”

Next season’s team will feature a ton of returning faces with just one senior on the roster, Sincere Snipes. The senior found wrestling later in life, joining the team his junior year. It was a meteoric rise from knowing very little about the sport to qualifying for state and accepting an offer to wrestle at Minnesota West.

“I would have laughed at you if you told me I would be this into wrestling a few years ago,” Snipes said. “I didn’t really want to be there on the first day of practice, but I ended up loving it eventually.”

Jackson Burns, another one of the state qualifiers, is evolving into an extremely talented wrestler. The junior joined the team on a whim his freshman year and is now hungry for more success on the mats.

“Coach asked me how much I weighed and he said he needed somebody in that weight class,” Burns said.

“I wasn’t happy with how I performed at state, I know I can do better,” he added. 

The Grangers have another rising star in Black. The sophomore is poised for big things in the future and got his first taste of the big dance this year.

“[State] was unlike anything I had ever experienced before,” Black said. “It’s a big stadium and a large crowd with all eyes on you, but at the end of the day it’s just wrestling like any other tournament.”

The wrestlers largely focused on the disappointment of coming up short, but not their coach. Pharis has seen these four as well as the entire team make massive strides this season.

“I know a lot of them were disappointed, but they shouldn’t be,” Pharis said. “They should be very proud of themselves and I’m very proud of them. “It does make me excited that these guys are so hungry and you can see how badly they want it,” he added.

While Pharis is happy with the progress the team has made, he knows the program is far from a finished product.

“So we had a great state tournament. We were excited because all the progress is huge, and we’re very, very proud of what we’ve done. But I think one of the mantras that we’ve had this year was we haven’t come this far just to come this far.