The Scenic City’s status as a hotbed of high school wrestling shows no signs of cooling down.
During the most recent TSSAA season on the mat, programs from the Chattanooga area won seven of a possible eight team state titles in duals and traditional tournament competition. Cleveland’s boys and girls swept their state championships — the Blue Raiders won the Class AA titles, while the Lady Blue Raiders took the all-class crowns on the girls’ side — as did Soddy Daisy in Class A, while Baylor won the Division II-AAA duals and McCallie won the Division II traditional tournament, with Boyd Buchanan the runner-up at DII-A/AA duals to Lakeway Christian.
More accolades flew in Friday morning, when 65 area prep wrestlers were named to the Tennessee Sports Writers Association’s all-state team, accounting for more than 30% of the honorees. Of those 65 local selections, 25 were individual weight-class champions at their respective state traditional tournaments, which included undefeated seasons for Hixson’s Braylan Cosper and Signal Mountain’s JoJo Uhorchuk as well as a National Prep title for fellow senior Titus Norman of Baylor.
Uhorchuk went 55-0 in his final prep season on his way to becoming a four-time state champion along with the first five-time Gordon Connell-McCallie Invitational champion.
This year’s Dave Schultz High School Excellence Award winner for the state of Tennessee, Uhorchuk went 237-3 overall during his prep career with the Eagles and was 103-0 over the past two seasons. Now he’s preparing to head to West Point later this year to wrestle for the Black Knights and follow his dream of serving in the Army one day.