For the second season in a row, Matthew Waddell has earned his spot among the nation’s elite collegiate wrestlers.
Waddell is a Gilmer High School alum and currently a junior at the University of Tennessee — Chattanooga. The Mocs traveled to Boone, N.C., to compete in the Southern Conference tournament, which concluded Feb. 28.
Waddell secured a runner-up placement in the 184-pound weight division for the second consecutive season to qualify for the NCAA’s Division I Wrestling Championships.
“Getting back to nationals was a goal, but it’s not the main goal,” Waddell said Monday. “I want to go out there and win a bunch of matches. That’s all we can do now is try to win matches. If you do that, good things will happen. I want to go out there and compete. This year, unlike any other, there hasn’t been much head-to-head competition. It will be a very interesting tournament.”
Waddell squared off against Campbell’s Caleb Hopkins in the finals and lost, 5-2. Waddell gained a 2-1 lead after the first period, and Hopkins’ point followed a stoppage.
“They stopped the match and said what I was doing was potentially dangerous. All I had was hand control, and I don’t know what they stopped it for,” Waddell said. “They restarted the clock and Hopkins almost got an escape, and I came back out front and put him in a headlock and they called me for locking hands, which isn’t a position you can get called for locking hands. So I ended up giving up a point there.”
Hopkins was awarded another penalty point in the second period because of hands to the face, though Waddell noted he dealt with the same issue all match.
Hopkins earned an escape in the third period for a 3-2 lead as Waddell was forced to push the action, which led to a Hopkins takedown.
“At that point (down 3-2), I have to chase him with less than a minute left because there’s no time to wait,” Waddell said. “I kept shooting and got off balance and he got a good go behind. I’m not taking anything away from him, but that should have been my match.”
In the opening round, Waddell made short work of The Citadel’s Kyle Kretzer with a pin in 1:32. Next up was Gardner Webb’s Jha’quan Anderson, who Waddell defeated, 5-2.
“The first-round match I had a kid from The Citadel that beat me earlier in the year,” Waddell said. “We knew that shouldn’t have happened. It was early in the year when we were trying to get our weight right, and I wasn’t ready to wrestle. I took him down and pinned him in the first period, and that was a good way to start the day.
“(Anderson) is tough, and is a big strong kid who doesn’t do much so it’s hard to score a lot of points on him. It was good to get those two wins after taking a (three week) break, especially after I took a loss in a dual (ahead of the SoCon tournament).”
UTC finished third in the conference standings and Campbell took home the title. During the dual portion of their schedule, the Mocs posted an 8-4 record and were 6-2 versus SoCon opponents.
Waddell is currently 11-4 on the season after posting a 22-9 record as a sophomore. This season has been interrupted by the pandemic and has limited mat time.
“It feels like we’ve had the most COVID issues of any team in the country,” Waddell said. “We were quarantined three or four times at the beginning of the season. I was quarantined for two weeks in December, right before the season started. I only had four days of practice leading up to the first dual. We were quarantined three or four times over the summer as well.”
Nationals will be held March 18-20 at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis, Mo. Waddell will be joined at the event by teammate Drew Nicholson, who won the 165-pound SoCon title.
Waddell’s brother Caleb is a freshman at UTC and earned the starting spot at 157 pounds. However, he was sidelined with an injury that required surgery and has been unable to wrestle this season.