Sumter – Keeping a steady lineup for a high school wrestling team is not an easy thing to do. There are 14 weight classes and there are any number of things that can cause wrestlers to move up or drop down in weight or lead to a shuffling of the lineup that complicates finding that perfect lineup.
Eastside head coach Jack Kosnicki has had no such worries this season.
“We’ve had the same lineup from Day 1 to the end of the year,” Kosnicki said. “There was a lot of movement the previous year, but the first lineup we put out this year is the one we’ve stuck with all year.
“I Knew we were strong and consistent even though we were a very young team. I knew from Day 1 we had something special.”
The end of the year is Saturday for the Eagles, who are 36-0 on the season. They will wrestle Lugoff-Elgin for the AAAA state championship at Dreher High School in Columbia for the second straight year with the chance to break one record and to extend their own record.
If Eastside beats the Demons, it will be the 19th state championship in program history. It currently holds the state record with 18 with Rock Hill. The Eagles have won a record eight straight state champions, the first in AAA and the last seven in AAAA. They are looking for nine in a row against L-E, whom they defeated 51-23 last year.
EHS senior Jack Wyland said winning has not gotten old for him.
“It’s different every year,” said Wyland, the defending individual state champion in the 152-pound weight class who is ranked No. 1 at 157 this year by sc.mat.com. “You enjoy the thrill of competing, especially when you make it this far.
“Last year is last year, this is another year. You’ve got to keep going.”
Eastside has a wrestler ranked in the top eight in 13 of the 14 classes. Six of them are ranked at the top of their respective classes and four of them won individual state championships last season.
Wyland will be going after his third individual state title in a couple of weeks. He won at 132 as a freshman in 2021 and finished second at 152 as a sophomore.
Junior George Maholtz is ranked first at 150. He won state at 145 last year and won at 126 in 2021.
Sophomore Payton Schrader is ranked No. 1 at 165 after winning state as a freshman – at 126. Senior Baron Leonard is No. 1 at 215 after being the 195 state champion last season.
The other top-ranked EHS wrestlers are sophomore Hank Lee at 175 and freshman Nate Manos at 106. Like Schrader, Lee made a big jump in weight classes. He finished second at 138 last year.
Other ranked Eastside wrestlers are freshman Drayton Johnson at third at 113, Sam Wyland at third at 138, freshman Kellen Smouse at fourth at 126, junior Barnett Langston at fifth at 132, senior Jaxon Wooten at sixth at 190, freshman Owen Salvato at seventh at 120 and junior Bronek Snizaski at eighth at 144.
Lugoff-Elgin is ranked fifth among AAAA schools by scmat.com while Eastside is ranked fifth. The Demons own a 39-9 record.
L-E head coach Ted Monroe said his squad has put in a lot of hard work to get back to this point.
“We had to believe in ourselves, as we lost multiple individual state champs off of last year’s team,” Monroe said. “This is an extremely young team. We lost some matches along the way that made us mentally tougher. We’ve overcome lineup issues and adversity to where we got things together to make a run at this thing on Saturday.”
The Demons have seven wrestlers ranked in their weight classes. Only two of them advanced to the individual state tournament last season.
Junior Rylan Griggs is the highest ranked Lugoff-Elgin wrestler at second for the 132 class. He finished third at 126 last year.
Junior Titan McGee is ranked sixth at 113 after being a state qualifier at 106 last year. Hunter Baxley is ranked eighth at 126. Sophomore Gabe Rush is at fifth at 150, while Gavin Priebe is eighth at 165.
Freshman Logan Hinton is ranked fifth at 175 and sophomore Colemann Gross is ranked fifth at 190.
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