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Polk County Middle got the championship matchup it wanted. Earned the final result it wanted. Took home the hardware the Wolverines most wanted.
Not a bad Tuesday for a program in a rebuilding season.
When the 2024-25 season began, few knew what to anticipate from a Wolverine wrestling squad short on experience. Any expectations, though, were undoubtedly met and exceeded as Polk Middle earned its third consecutive Blue Ridge Conference Duals Championship, defeating Bethel Middle and Apple Valley Middle in Canton to complete its championship trilogy.
Until Tuesday, no Polk Middle athletic team had ever won three straight Blue Ridge Conference titles. They’ll soon officially change that on the large list of division and conference winners in the school gym.
“We thought this would be a down year for us,” said Polk Middle head coach Jerry Cox. “We picked a good year to be down, because everyone else was down.
“But that’s what makes it fun every year. People ask, what more am I looking for here? Every year, there’s a puzzle to put together, pieces to try to find. We definitely hit our peak right when we needed to.”
The Wolverines finished with a 15-1 record, their only loss coming earlier this month to Apple Valley. That defeat snapped a 43-match winning streak; it may also have played a pivotal part in Tuesday’s result.
“I told (the team) that the thing I’m going to sleep on and believe is that if we don’t lose to Apple Valley, we probably don’t win here,” Cox said. “That’s what I’m hanging my hat on.
“The last Apple Valley match, we probably weren’t hitting on all cylinders. But we just kept growing and getting better and better.”
The four teams gathered in Canton Middle’s gym wrestled simultaneous semifinals, and the large Haywood County contingent there to support Canton and Bethel made for a deafening environment. Polk Middle, though, quickly silenced Bethel’s fan section, taking command of its match and rolling to a 70-30 victory over the Blue Demons.
Meanwhile, loud and hearty roars rang around the other mat, where Canton Middle raced to a 41-9 advantage over Apple Valley. But the Knights relied on their strength in the lower weight classes and fought back, winning eight straight matches and claiming a 54-47 triumph, stunning the home crowd.
As that match ended, Cox gathered Polk’s wrestlers in a corner of the gym and quietly reminded them that a championship rematch with Apple Valley “is what we wanted.” The Wolverines then made the most of that opportunity.
After forfeiting the 167-pound class to open the final, Polk quickly evened the score as Michael Jenkinson won by pin at 177. The Wolverines won the next three classes by forfeit, then reeled off four more wins as Ellis Searcy, Silas Amorelli, Jared Contreras and Rhys Jackson each won by pin. The normally stoic Jackson slapped the mat after his victory, which gave Polk a 48-6 lead.
Polk needed just two wins to secure its title, and that wait wasn’t long – Apple Valley scored a win at 108 pounds before Oakley McDowell scored a first-period pin of Egor Cludinov and Riley Morgan added a win by decision, scoring a near-fall in the final seconds for a 15-14 victory. That gave Polk an unsurmountable 57-12 advantage.
Pins by Alex Labreche and Andy Serrano rounded out Polk’s scoring.
As soon as post-match handshakes ended, Cox hit the mat for the traditional championship dogpile, the entire Wolverine team piling atop him in celebration. That included all 17 wrestlers that won matches at some point Tuesday, each a part of extending the program’s historic run.
“We’ve won three in a row, but for the first three years (with Cox as head coach), we won seven matches,” Cox said. “You never forget where you came from and what we had to do to build such a good program. It’s never too far in the back of my head of how quickly you can go back down.
“We were working just as hard when we were losing. We had athletes when we were losing. But when you build a good program, good kids just want to show up and win championships.”
And that, Polk Middle keeps doing.