Leitten 3-peats Southern Slam; Fort Mill 10th as a team

Fort Mill senior A.J. Leitten won his third consecutive Southern Slam title Saturday at Eastside High School, marking the eighth straight year the Jackets brought home a winner from one of the more prestigious wrestling tournaments in the Southeast.

Leitten, who won the event in 2014 at 126 pounds and 132 pounds in 2015, won this year’s event in the 138-pound weight class with a 9-0 major decision over Archer’s Gavin Smith. Leitten also won the tournament’s Most Outstanding Wrestler award for the second straight year.

Fort Mill as a team finished 10th out of 35 schools and was the top local school among the York County participating teams, including Rock Hill, York, Clover and South Pointe.

Besides Leitten, junior Brody Claassen game in second for Fort Mill in the 126-pound weight class after falling to Buford (Ga.)’s Nick Stonecheck 9-5. A junior and newcomer to Fort Mill, Jacob Hart, finished third at 145 pounds, winning the consolation finals 14-2 over Woodward Academy’s Tucker Witmer.

Jackets split in 3-way meet

Earlier in the week before the start of the Southern Slam, Fort Mill, ranked second in 5A, opened up its season with a three-way meet against 13th ranked Dutch Fork and sixth ranked 4A team in Lugoff-Elgin. Fort Mill would lead from the start against Dutch Fork getting the 47-28 win, while they would struggle at times with Lugoff-Elgin before dropping the last three matches to fall 39-27, after being tied at 27-27.

“We are young,” said head coach Chris Brock.

“We left opportunities on the table. We didn’t get it done. We got some cracks to fill.”

Against Dutch Fork, Fort Mill jumped out to a 6-0 lead with a forfeit win from Jackson Strong. The Jackets then dropped two straight matches before winning the next six to take a 41-6 lead. Picking up wins for Fort Mill were Claassen, Leitten, Hart, Nick Greek, Stephen Hamilton, and Jordan Markowski. Jack Kelley also got a forfeit win at 220 pounds.

In their match with Lugoff-Elgin, the two teams battled back and forth and were tied on four separate occasions. Fort Mill won the opening match with a win from Jacob Sturgeon, followed by dropping two matches in decisions to tie the match. Lugoff-Elgin took a 9-6 lead with its third straight win before Leitten put Fort Mill back on top at 12-9 with a third period pin.

Lugoff-Elgin tied the meet after winning the next contest before Fort Mill won at 160 pounds with Hamilton and 170 with Markowski. Lugoff-Elgin then won five of the next six matches to pick up the win. Only Kelley would get the win during that stretch winning at 220 pounds.

Upcoming this week for Fort Mill will be its first home match of the season against Charlotte Latin before hosting its own tournament, the Beef O’ Brady’s Classic this weekend.

This story was originally published December 5, 2016 at 1:44 PM with the headline "Leitten 3-peats Southern Slam; Fort Mill 10th as a team."