Camden County Wrestling Wins 7th Straight Combined State Championship
Remarkable seems to be just the right description to use when talking about the accomplishments of the Camden County wrestling team over the past seven seasons. That’s how many state championships the wrestling Wildcats have won consecutively under head coach Jess Wilder.
To take it a step further, now consider the fact that Camden County has won those state championships in two separate categories: dual and traditional wrestling. Wilder says what makes this year’s state titles even more improbable was the fact that there was little to no offseason.
“COVID really put us behind, as it did every sport,” Wilder, who just completed his 15th season as the Wildcats’ head wrestling coach, said. “We just didn’t have a chance to do much with these guys because, while other sports can accomplish some things virtually with individual weight training, keeping up with playbooks and those kind of things, we need two guys to wrestle. That’s to practice technique, speed… so, I was really worried that we would not be as sharp as we have been in past seasons.”
But, in the end, Camden County was able to overcome the challenges of the pandemic and win another state wrestling championship.
In winning the traditional wrestling championship, they outdistanced the West Forsyth wrestling team by 101 points, 253.5 to 152.5.
Three individual wrestlers captured state titles: freshman Konlin Weaver in the 126-pound class, junior Riley Dahlgren in the 120-pound class, and senior Kaleb Clark in the 132-pound class.
The remaining Camden wrestlers who placed were juniors Anthony Doyle, junior Cah’Mari Johnson and senior Garrett Gaston. They each finished in second place in their respective weight categories.
Finishing in third place were senior Daniel Fredericks, sophomore Mat Morton and junior Anthony Yancey.
Read more about the championship win in the digital magazine below:
