Pinning the Win: Wrestling Season Wrap-Up

The Heritage Wrestling Team has worked hard all throughout their season: ending with 25 wins-8 losses. Their head coach, Mike Craft, the team’s captains, Tate Thomas and Drew Deitz, and a super hard-working team worked hard in every match. This helped them end the season as one of the top 5 teams in the GA AAAA Duals Wrestling State Champions. At regionals, the team took a tough loss in the semifinals to Central Carroll, but they didn’t let that affect them. They came back and beat Sonoraville who was the team that took second place. The captain’s hard work helped each wrestler. Captain Tate Thomas said, “[My favorite moment of the year] would be [beating the second place winners] because I don’t like losing too much, and just being able to come back like that really helped us.” Both of the captains used their experience and knowledge to help teach the other wrestlers to grow. Captain Drew Dietz said, “I’ve improved on pushing myself and my teammates to be prepared for these matches” These athletes worked super hard to get to where they are now. Throughout the season, there were multip athletes out due to injury or illness. Being in such close contact with other wrestlers made it hard to stay healthy. However, this only made the team fight even harder to make up for those sick or injured athletes. This 2022-23 season, the wrestling team had more high-performing wrestlers and even more wrestlers improved like Freshman Kaden Taylor, Freshman Tyler Ward, and Freshman DJ Smith. Kaden said, “Coming back from a losing season and winning a lot this season [was something I accomplished].” Along with the big matches, they competed at The Hawk Invitational and got 1st Place, South Effingham Turkey Duals and got 2nd Place, North Murray Mountaineer Duals and got 2nd Place, and McCallie Invitational and placed 9th out of 37 teams. Now that the wrestling season is over, these athletes are going to take what they learned and improved on to carry it to the next season.