Northwestern wrestling wins Region 4-5A title with first win over Rock Hill in 15 years

Call it a changing of the guard. Call it a surprising piece of luck. Call it something in between.

Whatever it’s called, it happened: The Northwestern High School wrestling team defeated archrival Rock Hill, 36-30, at home on Wednesday night — delivering the Trojans their first win over the Bearcats since the 2005-06 season and the Region 4-5A title in the process.

The match was ultimately punctuated by Northwestern’s Kamarien Barnette (170 pounds), who won by pin fall to push the score to 36-18 with two individual matches remaining.

“We knew they weren’t going to give us anything,” Northwestern head coach Leon Boulware told reporters after the match. “We told them all week, ‘We’ve been working hard, and it’s our time.’ We were looking forward to this match to find out where we were because Rock Hill is always that measuring stick.”

Despite COVID-19 restricting fan capacity to 25%, Northwestern’s purple and gold gym was wild. Loud. And the teams clearly built off the energy — whether it was the Northwestern cheer squad livening up the quiet times, or the benches exploding after a pin.

There was plenty of gamesmanship in the well-conditioned air, too: The Trojans borrowed the football team’s inflatable tunnel and their wrestlers walked out of it to the tune of their “walk-up” songs of choice to hype them up. As for the Bearcats? Head coach Cain Beard wore his bulky state championship rings on his hands — a not-so-subtle reminder of his accomplished past.

“It’s a big match, you know?” Beard told The Herald. “You gotta bring out the bling.”

Northwestern makes history fast

Before the 2005-06 season, the last Northwestern win over Rock Hill was in 1977, per records available to The Herald and Northwestern High School.

Part of this drought can be attributed to Rock Hill’s historic program dominance: The Bearcats won 15 state championships in between 1980 and 2000, and now they’ve won another four since 2009.

But a lot of that, also, has to do with the fact that Northwestern hasn’t historically had a good wrestling program.

That is, it appears, until this season.

The Trojans hired Indian Land head coach Leon Boulware this summer. Boulware won two consecutive state championships at Indian Land before making a homecoming of sorts to his Rock Hill hometown — and he’s built the Trojan program quickly by anyone’s standards.

“Honestly, without having an offseason this year (because of) COVID, the guys really bought in,” Boulware said. “I mean, to be honest with you, I’m surprised with the turnaround that we got so fast.”

The progress can’t be overlooked. Northwestern, like Rock Hill, entered Wednesday’s match 2-0 in region play, a stark improvement from a year ago. And then last month, the team loaded some more talent on its roster when it welcomed two transfers into its program — Khaleem Heard, previously from York Comprehensive’s team, and Solomon Cortez, previously at Indian Land.

Each is a former individual state champion.

Bouleware said after the match that these roster additions are huge for Northwestern, as they would be for any program. But he also said his team was quite good before they arrived.

“For us to get them, we’re fortunate,” he said. “But I’ll be honest with you, without them, we thought we were going to be able to be successful tonight. The kids who’ve been here, I’m happy for them. … Javon Pacheco, who’s been here for four years. He’s seen the ugly. Now he’s seeing the good part of it. So I’m so proud of the seniors and the 12 guys that stepped up as well tonight, not just our transfers.”

Beard, who experienced his first-ever loss to Northwestern Wednesday, said both teams wrestled well, and that it was a “heck of a match.”

“I’m going to work to get better with our kids,” Beard said. “I know this: What we do at Rock Hill High, we do with our kids. We build our kids, and we build them when they’re freshmen and on through. And I’ll take where we’re at in our development and go from there and be happy.”

Match results

220: Northwestern’s Isaac Mclellan defeated Rock Hill’s Waverly Brooks (3-0)

Heavyweight: Rock Hill’s Garret Pfirman pinned Northwestern’s Zion Chalk (3-6)

106: Rock Hill’s Kameron Read defated Northwestern’s Christopher Wentz (3-9)

113: Rock Hill’s Cotton Smith pinned Northwestern’s Cory Dye Jr. (3-15)

120: Northwestern’s Irving Cabrera pinned Rock Hill’s Irin Stradford (9-15)

126: Northwestern’s Justin Spencer defeated Rock Hill’s Jonathan Read (12-15)

132: Northwestern’s Kaleem Heard won by technical fall against Rock Hill’s Ozzie Pullin (17-15)

138: Northwestern’s Javon Pacheco won by major decision against Rock Hill’s Brycen Thompson (21-15)

145: Northwestern’s Solomon Cortez defeated Rock Hill’s Richard Kimbrell (24-15)

152: Northwestern’s Michael Green pinned Rock Hill’s TaRacqus Young (30-15)

160: Rock Hill’s Dawson Cashier defeated Northwestern’s Ca’Lique Cunningham (30-18)

170: Northwestern’s Kamarien Barnette pinned Rock Hill’s Prince Brockington (36-18)

182: Rock Hill’s Demetrius Bledsoe pinned Northwestern’s Ajani Love (36-24)

195: Rock Hill’s Noah Cook pinned Northwestern’s Noah Lee (36-30)

Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the region records of Northwestern and Rock Hill going into Wednesday’s match. They were each 2-0.

This story was originally published February 3, 2021 at 10:05 PM.

Alex Zietlow

The Herald

Alex Zietlow writes about sports and the ways in which they intersect with life in York, Chester and Lancaster counties for The Herald, where he has been an editor and reporter since August 2019. Zietlow has won nine S.C. Press Association awards in his career, including First Place finishes in Feature Writing, Sports Enterprise Writing and Education Beat Reporting. He also received two Top-10 awards in the 2021 APSE writing contest and was nominated for the 2022 U.S. Basketball Writers Association’s Rising Star award for his coverage of the Winthrop men’s basketball team.