Camden County wrestling coach Jess Wilder spoke with ITG Next about his program’s extraordinary success and broke down the various competition formats for Georgia high school wrestlers.
Q: Where did your wrestling roots begin?
A: I wrestled in New York in fifth grade for one season and then started competing again in the ninth grade in Palm Bay, FL. My dad and uncle were wrestlers, so my brothers and cousins all participated in the sport.
Q: You have overseen one of the most successful athletic programs in any sport and at any school. Many of our readers seeing this may have no idea how successful your teams have been. How many consecutive state championships has Camden County wrestling been involved with and won?
A: We have won eight consecutive state championships in the dual and traditional format. In total, we have won nine state dual championship titles and eight state traditional titles.
Q: Your wrestlers at Camden have been successful in the two primary styles of wrestling. What are the main differences in traditional wrestling vs. freestyle wrestling?
A: Our program is based on winning in the traditional, folkstyle style of wrestling because that is the style that we compete for in the GHSA State Championships, and it’s also the style that colleges give scholarships for. In my early years, we considered doing more freestyle/Greco, but the training requirements are primarily based in Atlanta, and it just wasn’t feasible to transport a team that distance multiple times in the off season.
Q: Can you talk about the uniqueness of wrestling, where you can have individual state champions, as well as team state champions?
A: The GHSA State Dual Championship is the first state tournament that takes place in January. In a dual, each school puts their best wrestler in each of the 14 weight classes, and they wrestle head to head against another school. Score is kept based on the result of these 14 matches between these two schools, and a winner is declared at the end of the dual.
The format to the championship brackets is much like other team sports, such as football and basketball. The best teams in the state are entered in a bracket and advance until a GHSA state dual champion is crowned.
The second state tournament is the GHSA Traditional State Championships, which usually takes place in early February. A wrestler qualifies individually, not as a team, by placing top four at area and, this year, top six at sectional.
At the GHSA Traditional State Championship, wrestlers have an opportunity to be an individual state champion in their weight class and at the same time, score team points for the team they are representing. The more an individual wrestler wins, the more points he scores for his team. In this format, a team with only six wrestlers could win state if they all do extremely well.
It also provides an opportunity for a wrestler to be an individual state champion in his weight class, even if his team is subpar. At the end of the GHSA Traditional State Tournament, an individual champion is crowned in each weight class, and then, team points are added up to declare a GHSA traditional state team champion.
