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Jordan Wigger (l) returns to the Green Wave wrestling team with three individual state championships under his belt.

Armed with some strong leadership, the Green Wave wrestling team is ready to start a new season.

Summerville has starters Jordan Wigger, Tyler Fachko, Gavin Perkins, Chad Wood, William Cranford and Trevon Pringle returning to the team. After missing most of last season with an injury, Myron Smith has rejoined the team and Kyle Sullivan, Corey Alumbaugh and Daniel Smith also bring some experience to the mat for the Wave.

“Our work ethic has been good,” Summerville coach Darryl Tucker said. “Our wrestlers are getting after it at practice and pushing each other. The captains have taken an active role and are doing a good job of showing the others how they need to practice if they are going to compete at a high level.”

Wigger has earned All-American honors for the past four years. This summer, he placed fourth in the 112-pound weight class for the Greco-Roman division at the ASICS/Vaughan Junior National Championships held in Fargo, North Dakota and fifth in the weight class at the Freestyle National Championships.

He is chasing his fourth straight individual high school state championship, already having titles in the 119, 112 and 103 pound divisions. If he gets his fourth he would join very elite group of athletes.

He also needs only 40 pins to set a new state career record and only has two losses in his high school career.

“He is the clear-cut leader of the team and some of our other guys are buying in and starting to do some of the things he does like traveling on their own to competitions and camps and having extra workouts,” Tucker said. “It’s like I have another coach because he wants to bring the other wrestlers’ intensity level up to where his is. It’s great to have a guy who has been all over the country wrestling do that for you. A lot of our wrestlers are putting more time in this year so we are excited to see what kind of results we will get from it.”

Perkins, a state qualifier at 130 last season, Wood and Wigger are the team’s captains.

Tucker is in his 11th season as a wrestling coach and his fourth as the head coach for the Green Wave program. Summerville is ranked eighth for Class AAAA by scmat.com. New rankings are expected to be released in December.

“Our lightweights are always the strength of our team and we are strong there again but we are also pretty experienced in the middleweights,” Tucker said. “We need to get some heavyweights ready and we are hoping we can start getting a younger guy set up to succeed there in the future.”

He is hoping to add several wrestlers once the football season is over.

As usual, Summerville faces a tough schedule. Fort Dorchester, which is currently the top-ranked 4-A team in the state, Beaufort and Ashley Ridge are all in Summerville’s region. But Tucker is optimistic.

“We have a lot of younger guys who have some experience, we just need to get them some more mat time,” he said. “It is going to be tough. Our region is probably the toughest in the state. But we hope to be competitive. We had a great offseason so we will just take it one match at a time and see where we are at the end of the season.”

Contact Roger Lee @ 873-9424 ext. 213 or rlee@journalscene.com

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