STATE WRESTLING: St. James looking for state title this weekend
The St. James wrestling team won the South Super Sectional recently and now sets its sights on a state title. (Contributed)
By TIM GAYLE
At the beginning of the year, it was hard to gauge St. James’ wrestling team. The Trojans missed roughly a month of the season while they were competing in the football playoffs, then took a couple more weeks off to get ready for the transition from football to wrestling.
“We really didn’t wrestle our first match until mid-December because of football,” St. James coach Jeff Corley said. “Over half my team does both. We probably had six or seven kids out of 22 kids that did not play football. Football shape and wrestling shape is two different things, so we delayed our start a little bit. We pushed back our wrestling season probably about 20 days just so I could get these guys in shape.”
Corley wanted to make sure his wrestlers were at their peak physical performance to avoid injury, but he had no way to know the mental makeup of his athletes after winning the school’s first state championship in football.
“You’re coming off the best athletic game of your life,” observed sophomore Pruitt Conner, an outside linebacker on the football team. “It’s everything you’ve worked for your whole life in football. You win state and you’re in the record books forever. It’s hard to get your mind shifting gears back to the grind. You’re already behind, we’ve got to go. You have to mentally change your mindset, get back in the wrestling mindset. All right, it was great to win one ring, let’s win two in a season.”
The Trojans finished third in duals competition last month, then won the South Super Regional competition at Garrett Coliseum last weekend, qualifying nine wrestlers to compete in the 68th state wrestling championships at Huntsville’s Von Braun Center.
St. James had 182.5 points to take first place in the regional competition, followed by Ranburne (173.5), Saks (148) and Cleburne County (142). Prattville Christian finished fifth with 129.9 points and Catholic was sixth with 117 points.
The top six qualifiers advance to the state championships in each classification weight division. The state wrestling tournament will get under way Thursday afternoon and conclude Saturday.
While nine wrestlers qualified, three reached the finals and one won an individual championship. St. James’ Braylen Corley (28-5) beat Bryson Pugh (24-7) of Prattville Christian 8-6 in the 120-pound division to win the regional title, while Logan Hartson (126 pounds) and Jake Huff (152 pounds) also reached the finals for the Trojans.
While no local wrestlers earned regional championships other than Corley, Catholic’s Joseph Rodriguez (132 pounds) and Jake Dean (182 pounds) and Prattville Christian’s Aidan Cockrell (285 pounds) did reach the championship round.
“We have a (defending) state champion, of course, and this year we’re looking to try and get somebody else on the podium,” Corley said. “I think we’ve got a good chance at state. It’s going to be tough with only nine kids (qualifying) but I think if everybody can place at the state tournament, that’s really where you rack up points and you can win state championships like that.”
It was the second time the Trojans have won a super regional championship, duplicating the performance of the 2018 squad.
“To finish first out of 21 teams is pretty strong,” Corley said. “We had a lot of teams that came from the north area to make the sections even. Nothing was easy about it. I’m proud of the guys and the way they wrestled.”
Of the 14 weight divisions, St. James did not compete in the 132 and 160-pound weight divisions and qualified nine of their 12 wrestlers for state competition -- Noah Raines, who reached the 106-pound sectional quarterfinals; Luke Robbins, who competed in the 113-pound quarterfinals; Corley at 120; Hartson at 126; Emmett Rasmussen, who reached the 145-pound semifinals; Huff at 152; Conner, who reached the 170-pound quarterfinals; Brooks Bacheler, who competed in the 182-pound quarterfinals; and AJ Alozie, who reached the 195-pound semifinals.
Hartson, the defending state champion, is a team captain and is 36-2 this season, losing to Westminster Christian’s Marcus Wright earlier this season and losing to American Christian’s Fisher Deason in the finals of the South Super Regional.
“Two years ago, he was a state runner up and last year he won the state championship,” Corley said. “I expect Logan to be there at the end and let’s see how the chips fall. He’s been there before, he knows what it takes to win one.”
To repeat as a state champion, Hartson likely will have to beat Wright.
“It’s a little bit different this year,” Hartson said. “The same guy that I’m probably going to have in the finals this year, he ended up busting weight (in 2022) and I got to avoid him. The pressure’s building up. Everybody’s expecting great things from me and I’m facing a guy that I’m 0-5 against in my career. There’s only three matches between me and a state title.
“At the end of the day, I’ve got nothing to lose. I’m 0-5 against him. So what? If I win, that just proves to everybody that I’m a little more than they thought.”
The same can be said for the Trojans, who finished behind Ranburne in the duals but ahead of them in the South Super Regional.
“A couple of weeks ago, they didn’t even have us ranked in the top 10,” Hartson pointed out. “We placed third in team state (at duals), won the South sectionals and now St. James is back. I think that was a big morale boost for the team as well.”
Huff, sidelined for much of last year with a knee injury, will be competing in the 152-pound division this weekend.
“He weighed about 170 in football so it took a while to get the weight off of him,” Corley said. “Now he’s at a point where he feels comfortable. Ever since he’s dropped, it’s become easier for him. When he’s wrestling well, I feel like he’s one of the best in his weight class.”
The Trojans have no one competing in the 160-pound division this year. Conner was wrestling in that weight division last year but is 170 pounds this year.
“I was weighing about 185,” Conner said. “That was my goal for football, but it was football weight. I came into wrestling and was losing weight good, then I got to 170 and I started losing a little less weight. Sixty is a hard weight class and 70 is a hard weight class. I looked at my section (participants) and I liked my chances at 70. I thought I could perform with most of those guys at 70. Either way, we’d have a missing weight class.”
Perhaps it was the linebacker coming out in him, but Corley said Conner was “trying to outmuscle people” earlier in the season and “now he’s starting to wrestle with more technique. Since he’s done that, he’s done really well.”
The Trojans face an uphill battle with just nine wrestlers competing in 14 weight divisions but wrestling, like track, is a matter of piecing the individual performances together. Finishing first in the South Super Regional, Corley believes, is a blueprint for his team this weekend.
“I think winning the South as a team upped our motivation for everyone,” Huff said. “I know we have wrestlers who made it to state but they have hard (competition in the) weight classes. But if we can keep that motivation, they can upset some people.”
“Winning the super sectional is winning half the state,” Corley added. “I think we’re a top five team in the whole state.”