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Suwannee's Austin McKinney (right) wrestles against Columbia's Arthur Vanderpool on Thursday night. (JORDAN KROEGER/Lake City Reporter)
Expectations are high this season for Suwannee — state title high.
The Bulldogs started that journey off on the right foot Thursday night, dominating their rival in a huge victory to open the season.
Suwannee won 13 of 14 weight classes — eight via pin — to rout Columbia 75-3 on the road in the Battle for the Paddle. That was despite the Bulldogs being forced to pull up five JV wrestlers due to five on varsity missing weight.
But it didn’t matter. Suwannee’s roster depth is a luxury for head coach John Wainwright, who says this year’s Bulldogs are just as talented as his Wakulla team from 2009-10 that finished state runner-up.
“This team here reminds me of them,” Wainwright said. “They’re the same weight, same everything, they’re clicking, and we don’t have issues I had there. These kids are working their tails off.
“This is the fifth year of building Suwannee back to where Suwannee should be, and we’re getting close.”
Clay Starling (190), Sam Ballard (215), Eli Jolicoeur (113), Holden Corben (heavyweight), Lola Ballard (106), Austin McKinney (150), Marshall White (157) and Christian Soccares (162) all won via pin. Justin Contreras (120) and Johnathan Gonzalez (138) also won their matches for Suwannee, while Ben Lewis (175), Tenton Marshall (126) and Seth Dykes (132) won via forfeits due to the flu bug hitting the Columbia roster.
Wainwright believes he has several wrestlers who can reach the state medal stand at the IBT meet, if not win their weight classes this season in Class 1A. McKinney leads the list of contenders as the reigning LCR Wrestler of the Year after placing fifth at state, while Jolicoeur, Contreras, Pearson and White all qualified for state last season.
Pearson finished a team-best third at state in 2023 and Contreras also reached the medal stand with an eighth-place finish. Suwannee was also a semifinalist at state duals last season.
“We’ve got to get McKinney in shape, but I think he’s ready to win it this year,” Wainwright said. “Justin, Eli, Topher and Marshall are right there with him. Those five kids right there, if they put in the work and then time this year, they’re going to be right there at the state finals at the end.”
Only Zhane Smith won for the Tigers in the 144 class. He’s one of a bunch of underclassmen on a roster that features no seniors and only two juniors.
Columbia head coach Pete Whittington expects this season to be full of ups and downs, but he believes he has a roster brimming with potential. But he also wants his wrestlers to face stiff competition every week, which is partly why he wanted to open the regular season against Suwannee.
“It was about how we expected,” Whittington said. “Suwannee is one of the top-ranked teams in the state this year at 1A. They were in the semifinals as a team last year, so we knew that coming in. The thing we wanted to teach our kids is that there are levels to this stuff because we went to the Buchholz preseason and we looked really good. We wrestled The Villages and Tavares and we dominated both of those, so we wanted to kind of give them a reality check and show them that there are levels to this stuff. The good news is it happened opening night, so now they know where they need to be by the end of the year. That’s really what we wanted to get accomplished.”
Smith is one of those wrestlers Whittington is extremely excited about even as a freshman. Brandon Pitts is another freshman Whittington says he expects to be very good, and Landon Slater is another who could make some noise in his first season wrestling as a sophomore.
While Whittington expects there to be plenty of growing pains this year with such a young roster, he believes by the postseason his team will develop to the point where as many as 10 wrestlers could qualify for regionals.
“We had some surprises, like Zhane Smith,” Whittington said after Thursday’s dual. “He’s a freshman and he’s exciting because he’s one of our kids that came up through our program. But we’re still a year or two away. I think by the end of the season we’re going to surprise some people. We may not be the best dual team but we’re going to do all right in IBTs. We have some talent that we’ll be all right in IBTs.”
Suwannee debuted its first female wrestlers on Thursday, but Columbia had the edge there. Josie Raulerson, JJ Williams and Bella Guerrier-Lajeir all won their matches before the main dual. Only Carlee Morrison lost, but she’s expected to make a run at regionals this season.
“Carlee is going to be all right,” Whittington said. “We keep throwing her out against boys, but she’s been beating some boys too so when she goes against those girls matches she’ll be fine. We’re extremely excited about Bella. Bella is going to be something special. She’s a jujitsu girl so she has that natural ability already with her hips and everything, so we’re expecting good things out of here. And our heavyweight Josie, she beats boys all the time. And tonight she finally got to wrestle a boy and we saw how that went, so I don’t think she’s going to see any real competition until regions.”