North Myrtle Beach Times Serving our Community and the Grand Strand for over 50 years
By John Smithson
If your idea of wrestling is a ring with two muscled combatants throwing each other, chairs or punches, then you need to watch high school or college wrestling.
The competition happens on a large mat with a circular “ring’ if you will, where two individuals of different weight classes try to better their opponent by takedowns, reversals or other moves to earn points or pin their opponent in three two-minute periods. The wrestler with the most points or a pin is the winner.
Wrestling is an individual and team sport. Each wrestler for opposing teams contributes to the team’s victory, which is secured by points.
North Myrtle Beach High School’s wrestling team competed in one home four-team meet and was in Florence at a tournament last weekend. If you have never seen these kids wrestle you have three more chances at home to do so. The Chiefs have home matches with Conway (January 7), Myrtle Beach (January 14), and Carolina Forest (January 21).
The Chiefs wrestling teams, JV and varsity, have a new coach, Ryan Marrs. Marrs admits that he has a young team “with many of the athletes getting their first real matches of their careers. I have six seniors, two that are returning state qualifiers, Levi Wheeler at 120 pounds and Nicholas Padilla at 215 pounds.”
“Both wrestlers are undefeated so far and have perfect 16-0 records heading into the Florence tournament at South Florence, which should give them very good competition. SCMAT.com rankings should be out soon and both should be in the top 5 of their respective weight classes.”
Marrs said the rest of his lineup is made up of freshmen, sophomores and a few juniors. “We are currently down three middleweights with injury, but they should be back soon to boost the middle of our lineup. We also have two female varsity wrestlers, sophomores Megan Elliot and Aaliyah Shields who are both getting meaningful mat time thus far.”
Marrs said experience is the key to wrestling. “The kids are young but learning fast and there is no substitute for actual competition. It’s really sink or swim for them at this point but I am very optimistic that most of them will choose to swim sooner than later,” Marrs concluded.
