For the second time in three seasons, a Hall County high school has been stripped of its wrestling state title.
In both cases, Gilmer High School finished as runners-up, and just like 2021, there is no championship hardware on its way to the campus located on Bobcat Trail.
This time around, Chestatee High’s girls program used an ineligible wrestler over the second half of the season who did not carry enough credit hours to participate, per a press release last week from Hall County athletic director Stan Lewis.
Chestatee won the girls traditional state championship Feb. 18, while Gilmer and Carrollton tied for second place. Chestatee reported the violation to the Georgia High School Association April 12, and its appeal to retain the state championship was later denied.
“It’s unfortunate when anything like this happens,” said Gilmer head coach Josh Ghobadpoor. “The ones who suffer the most are the kids. This situation is about credits, which is a different kind of scenario than just ‘Hey, you looked at the report cards and they have the grades or they don’t.’”
Back in 2021, North Hall fielded an academically ineligible wrestler who did not pass enough classes to participate. He then helped the Trojans defeat the Bobcats in the duals state finals.
Ghobadpoor does not believe the Chestatee and North Hall scenarios are a direct comparison.
“If it’s a credit situation, that’s a difficult thing for a coach to see as opposed to just a grade on a report card,” he said. “Even though I feel like this is a different situation and circumstances all together, again, it’s another Hall County school. I’m not pinning it all on Hall County. The bad thing is the teams (who finished behind them) don’t get moved up. So you end up with no champion.
“I’m not saying that girl would have made the difference between us winning and not winning, but in the North Hall situation, I felt like that was the difference in us winning a duals state championship.”
For its transgression, Chestatee returned its team trophy and all individual medals, and the ineligible wrestler forfeited all wins. The school was fined $500 by the GHSA and placed on “severe warning status” for the 2023-2024 academic year.
“The way we do it at GHS, Mr. (Matt) Johnson does an amazing job with his responsibilities as athletic director,” Ghobadpoor praised. “He makes sure all our kids are eligible, that the coaches understand, we’re given a list and we go through that and he does it very diligently. We’ve never had an issue about those kind of things.”