JASPER, Ga. - The seeding held pretty much true to form Saturday in the Area 7-AAAA traditional tournament at Pickens High School, which was certainly good news to Gilmer.
The Bobcats had seven individual champions and advanced 12 of their 14 wrestlers into next weekend's sectional round while rolling up 242 team points to win by nearly 80 points over second-place Heritage.
However, if the main goal is to place wrestlers into the sectional round, Heritage matched Gilmer with 12.
"That's the most we've had in a while, and I think it's more than we had when we won state (in 2012)," Heritage coach Mike Craft said. "I was very pleased, though I would have liked some of our placements higher in the end. Still, with only one senior and over half our team freshmen and sophomores, I was real happy to do this well."
In all, 11 of the 14 No. 1 seeds won titles.
The Generals had only one individual champion - defending state titlist Chuckie Thurman at 126 pounds - but they had three runners-up and three third-place finishers. The top four finishers in each weight class will compete in the Class AAAA "B" sectional at Gilmer.
Gilmer, coming off its Class AAAA state duals title in mid-January in Macon, did not miss a beat. Coach Joshua Snider's team earned individual titles from Alberto Perez at 120 pounds, Lucas Patterson at 132 (in a 4-2 upset of top-seeded Jacob Mariakis of Ridgeland), Ethan Teague at 138 (the only No. 3 seed to win a title), Keegan Sharpe at 145, Jake Parker at 170, Matthew Waddell at 182 and Levi Seabolt at 285.
"Everybody performed very, very well, about like we expected them to," said Snider, whose Bobcats also had four runners-up. "We would have liked to have had a couple more guys place higher, but we've got a lot of guys going to the sectionals, and that's the key.
"Every match we lost today we are going to look at and try to find improvement next week at sectionals. We've done that all year with certain individual matchups, and we hope to be able to do it again for next week."
Northwest Whitfield qualified eight wrestlers for sectionals, including 195-pound champion Jordan Lewis, but Bruins coach Allen Tucker wasn't satisfied with the day's work.
"I thought we had a good shot at getting 10 in," he said. "We wrestled OK, but we didn't do as well as we could. We wrestled like we hadn't been on the mat for three weeks.
"This region is pretty tough, though. I will say that every weight class here will have at least two place in the state tournament, and I wouldn't be surprised to see more. There are four classes - heavyweight, 126, 132 and 138 - where we could have three or maybe even all four place."
While Ridgeland only advanced six wrestlers to the sectional round (from which the top eight finishers at each weight will advance to state), three of them - Chris Prescott at 113, Ryan McGill at 152 and Chris Henderson at 220 - will go as area champions.
Other individual champions were Pickens' Koby Milner at 106 and LaFayette's Cole Ingram at 160.
Contact Lindsey Young at lyoung@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6296. Follow him on Twitter @youngsports22.