Fort Mill starts wrestling season with bang at the Southern Slam

For the ninth consecutive year, the Fort Mill Yellow Jackets have crowned a champion at the Southern Slam wrestling tournament at Eastside High School.

Senior Jake Hart won the 152-pound weight class beating River Bluff’s Ben Emery 8-2 and avenging his loss to Emery in last year’s state championship match. Fort Mill finished 14th overall in the tournament after taking a limited group of wrestlers to the two-day tournament.

Senior Brody Claassen finished fourth at 138 pounds falling in the consolation finals 4-2 to Luke Story of Science Hill. Senior Jack Kelley finished seventh at 220 pounds winning by forfeit.

Earlier in the week, Fort Mill opened the season with two blowout wins against Westwood and Dutch Fork. The Jackets participated in a three-way meet at Dutch Fork and opened by beating Westwood 67-9.

Fort Mill never trailed in either match and opened the Westwood match jumping out to a 19-0 start with wins coming from Claassen (145), Hart (160), Josh Cizmadia (152), and Dylan Honaker (170). The Jackets lost their only two matches of the dual at 182 and 195 before picking up wins at 220 by forfeit and then getting a first period pin from Kelley at heavyweight.

Westwood forfeited at 106, 113 and 120, before Fort Mill got wins at 126 pounds from Jacob Sturgeon, 132 from Zach Hornbrook and Adam Beihl (138).

“We have a lot of young guys in there,” said Fort Mill head coach Chris Brock. “I am pleased with our start. We have a couple anchors in our line up; we just need some young guys to step up.”

Against Dutch Fork, Fort Mill won 61-10 again dropping a trio of matches in the dual. Fort Mill started off going up 46-0 as they got wins in the match from Cizmadia (152), Hart (160), Honaker (170), Aubrey Schaffer (182), Youseff Kenner (195), Reese Key (220), Kelley (hwt.), Ethan Johnson (106), Sebastian Colon (120), Joseph Banny (138) and Claassen (145).

Fort Mill will face South Pointe to open its home schedule this week before hosting the Beef O’Brady’s tournament on Friday and Saturday.

This story was originally published December 5, 2017 at 4:39 PM with the headline "Fort Mill starts wrestling season with bang at the Southern Slam."