Championship marks the Bobcats’ 18th in a row
Gilmer High School continued its wrestling dominance with an 18th straight traditional area championship.
GHS hosted the five-team event Monday, and 12 Bobcats were crowned champions across 14 weight classes. Gilmer also secured a third and fourth place finish as its entire starting lineup qualified for sectionals.
“We’ve won five traditional and five area duals titles since I’ve been here. There’s a long streak going back to the early 2010s or 2000s. It’s something to be proud of and something that’s cool to be a part of,” said GHS head coach Josh Ghobadpoor.
The area tournament was originally scheduled for last Saturday but inclement weather postponed it by two days.
“It’s the first time in my career where we’ve ever had to do anything like that because of the weather. Despite some of those odds, we did really well,” said Ghobadpoor. “Twelve of 14 guys wrestled to their seed so I think the seeding was on point. The other two were just one spot off from where we had them seeded.
“There are still things to work on, but I’m really happy with the effort. I was really happy with everyone who came out today. We had a good crowd, and the tournament ran very efficiently.”
The Bobcats got the finals rolling with four straight champions. Finishing first were Gilmer’s Juan Rafael (106 pounds), Carson Farist (113), Arturo Gonzalez (120) and Bregan Berry (126).
Bobcat Kellen Watts (132) won his consolation finals match for third place before eight more Bobcats had their hands raised.
Also claiming first place were Carson Bentley (138), Frisly Ambrocio (145), Miguel Jacinto (152), Diego Jacinto (160), Daniel Reynoso (170), Owen Moss (195), Dylan Galloway (220) and Tony Olea (185).
Gilmer’s Hunter Brown (182) made weight before leaving the tournament because of illness. He defaulted to fourth place.
GHS won the tournament with room to spare with 259.5 points. North Murray finished second ahead of Murray County, 192-158.5.
The next stage of the qualifying process is sectionals. Four of Class 3A’s eight regions will convene at Lumpkin County High School Friday and Saturday. Wrestlers will compete in 16-man brackets, and a top eight finish is needed to qualify for the upcoming traditional state tournament.
Ghobadpoor discussed the week ahead, noting, “Our plans changed a little bit. We were expecting to have a practice today (Monday) and instead we had a tournament. Luckily, most of our guys are healthy. I don’t think anyone walked away too banged up. So we can kind of look at today like it was a good hard practice.
“We’ll have practice this week and head to Lumpkin on Friday. There were a lot of variables that got thrown into the week and our kids responded really well. Practices should be concise and to the point, and we’ll work on individual needs.”