Glynn Academy wrestling made county history this past Saturday.
Coming off a program-best fourth-place finish a year ago, the Terrors finished as the runners-up at the GHSA Class 6A Team Duals Wrestling State Championships, the best finish for any team in Glynn County history.
“It’s really a great feeling,” said Terrors wrestling coach Ryan Aflau. “The kids, the parents, and our coaching staff are excited. Me as a coach, I’m excited for them.
“We just try to build every weekend — we try to build off the week before, and sometimes the year before. The goal is just to continuously improve.”
Glynn Academy finished second in the Region 2-6A duals a week earlier — its first and only loss of the season coming at the hands of defending state champion South Effingham in the region finals — to earn a spot as one of the final 16 teams in title contention.
Ultimately, like the region title, the state championship would come down to a dual between Glynn and South Effingham, but a rematch was far from given.
First, the Red Terrors had to battle through a gauntlet that began with eventual third-place finisher Woodward Academy.
“Naturally kids are going to want another shot at it, and I think with the type of mentality that we’ve instilled in the kids, we always come back better and stronger — they believe in that whole-heartedly,” Alfau said. “But we weren’t really guaranteed a shot because we had Woodward right off the bat. Woodward finished the state duals in third place, so they were a very quality team… We had a tough matchup off the bat.
“We had to take every match one at a time, really not get too far ahead of ourselves, and then just focus on the task at hand. The kids did that.”
Glynn Academy dispatched Woodward 44-22 in the opening round of the championships before notching a dominant 72-6 victory over Alexander in the quarterfinals. The Red Terrors capped off Day 1 of the tournament with a 49-30 win over Jackson County to secure a spot in Saturday’s state finals.
On the opposite side of the bracket, South Effingham continued its own roll, beating Rockdale County (67-6), Newnan (74-0) and North Forsyth (48-13) to set up another battle between the region rivals.
Since Aflau took charge of the GA wrestling program in the summer of 2021, the Terrors have prided themselves on learning from losses. Glynn routinely picks itself up and comes back stronger.
This weekend was no different.
After taking a convincing loss at the hands of South Effingham at the region duals, Glynn Academy got back in the gym and devised a game plan that would push the defending champions to the brink.
“They put their best possible lineup out there at region duals, and it kind of gave us the opportunity to kind of shore up where we needed to shore up and make the adjustments we could make to kind of close the gap on them,” Alfau said. “The kids bought into the idea that we were going to make some adjustments, and we were going to ask guys to to do a better job, and we were going to ask guys to move up weight classes, and we were going to try to do some damage control at the top half of our lineup to minimize the amount of points they scored on us last time.
“The kids did a great job with that. They answered the call. They did a great job doing what they needed to do to minimize some of those points, and then on the front half of the lineup, we won matches that we lost. It was an overall improvement.”
South Effingham took the first two matches — the second worth 6.0 points on a forfeit by GA brought on by an injury to one of its wrestlers — before Glynn came back to take an 11-9 lead on a 20-4 victory by Cade Morgan over Bobby Craun at 165 and Caleb Cross’ pinfall of Zachary Utnehmer in the 175-pound match.
The Mustangs scored the next 15 points to stake themselves to a 24-11 advantage, but the Terrors wouldn’t go away easily, Liam Bee’s pinfall of Christopher Hardeman at 106 closing the gap to 7.0 points before Carson Lutz earned 3.0 more points with a 9-4 decision over Alarik Gibson at 113.
South Effingham won a 10-3 decision in the 120-pound match before Glynn Academy responded with Hunter Kegley’s 11-2 major decision over Jacob Stellhorn at 126 to draw back to within 27-24 with three matches remaining.
A pin by the Mustangs in overtime of the 132-pound match gave them a 9.0-point lead, but the Terrors continued to fight. The 138-pound matchup saw Jefferson Cuttino win by a 7-0 decision against Eli Wood to earn Glynn 3.0 more points, and in the final match of the championship dual, 144-pound Aiden Waters won by disqualification against Gannon White, tying the score at 33-33.
The crowd in Cumming was abuzz as the officials tried to sort through the list of criteria that would determine the winner. After going multiple criteria without breaking the tie, the match was decided by the number of matches in which 6.0 points were earned.
South Effingham had four such matches; Glynn Academy had three. Thus, the Mustangs won their second consecutive Class 6A championship while the Terrors had to settle for second.
It wasn’t the ending Glynn Academy was hoping for, but it was yet another seismic step for the program ahead of the traditional season.
“It is tough,” Alfau said. “It’s tough for the parents, it’s tough for the kids, it’s tough for the staff and everybody that is totally invested and bought in, it’s tough for them. But we’ve really tried our best as a coaching staff to focus on the positives in some of the worst situations possible.
“Typically when we get back from competition, we talk about all the things we did right, and we really focus on expanding on those positives. There is a lot that can be taken away, there is a lot that you learn from a loss, and there is a lot that you can build on. I think the biggest thing that we showed was the level of character that these kids have, the level of effort these kids have… I’m really excited for them. The biggest positive to takeaway is that we’re just doing things the right way, and we’re developing kids to be very, very solid individuals. These kids are special.”