Three Mavs go to podium at State
Anderson County High School’s boys wrestling team concluded its historic 2023-24 season on the Volunteer State’s grand stage.
The Mavericks had three wrestlers record podium finishes at the Class A State Championships at the Williamson County Expo Center in Franklin Saturday.
Josh Bingham (who wrestles in the 165-pound weight class), Morgan Dye (215 pounds) and Eli Bratton (285) all finished sixth in their respective divisions over the weekend.
The three podium finishes in 2024, nearly equaled the previous podium finishes in the 12-year history of the ACHS program.
“There’s no doubt, and I think it’s pretty clear that this season was our most successful season in our program’s history,” Mavericks’ coach Matt Slone said. “Prior to this year, we had four wrestlers medal in our history.
“Of course we had two who did it twice.”
Stone Cummings won a pair of state medals during his career and current Anderson County assistant coach Tate Holmes earned a pair of podium finishes.
“Stone Cummings (medaled) twice and Tate Holmes medaled during both his junior and senior seasons,” Slone said. “Tate is an assistant coach with me and he’s been a huge part of our program for all 12 years of it.”
In total, Anderson County had six state qualifiers as Tripp Haire (113 pounds), Aiden Derry (190) and Emery Presson (144) also competed in the Midstate over the weekend.
In addition to having six individual state qualifiers and three podium finishers, the Mavericks qualified for the state duals this season, for the second time in program history. They also won their first-ever state dual match.
But Slone is looking for even better things in the coming years.
“We almost doubled our state medals for our program and we went to the state duals, and we won a match there for the first time in our history,” he said. “But we’re not satisfied with sixth-place finishes for those guys.”
Slone added that the team can’t rest on its laurels if the program is going to continue to have success.
“You can’t just wrestle three months out of the year and expect to compete with the best,” he said. “We’re going to work in the offseason. We’re going to have some camps and there’s going to be plenty of open mat time.”
The Mavs may have had more success over the weekend had they not been bitten by the injury bug.
“Eli tweaked his knee but he wrestled through it and Josh broke his wrist and had to forfeit his fifth-sixth place match,” Sloane said. “Morgan wrestled really well but it was ridiculous how many returning medalists that you had back that were in that bracket. It was really tough.”