BRYSON CITY, N.C. – Senior Owen Gillespie ’26 scored 17 points in the first varsity win of the season for Christ School wrestling on Saturday.
Special thanks to Program Director Jimmy Ballantyne P’30 for this report on the rest of the two-day tournament at Swain County High School.
This week has started to bear some fruit from the efforts so far this season. The boys have embraced the team culture and are actively participating in developing their character. They are holding each other accountable in working toward their team goals, and we're making good progress.
After our third full week of practice, we got to test ourselves with some tournament competition. The results were impressive! Often, what we lacked in experience, we made up for in grit. We were able to pinpoint some strengths and weaknesses we have as a team, so we can reinforce the good and address the difficulties.
In the JV side of the tournament on Friday night, we had 24 wins, and we (unofficially) scored the most team points in the tournament.
We had a whopping six weight class champions: Rory Jennings ‘28, Scotty Keplinger ‘30, Aidan Beatty ‘27, Tristan Richard ‘27, Ethan Keep ‘27, and Mathis Lessard ‘27, four more silver-medalists: Hugh Bailey ‘29, Ian Fruend ‘28, Thomas Hunter ‘26, and Jackson Plume ‘28, and two other wrestlers got their first wins: Jovi Wijesinghe ‘29 and Danny Samayoa ‘29.
Here are some fun stats about our success:
- We made the first attack in over 90 percent of our matches!
- The Greenies had more pins than any other team in the tournament.
- Tristan had three pins in less than 2 minutes (and the second-best in the entire tournament.
- Scotty had the fifth-best time for three pins (under 4 minutes).