LIVE OAK — Suwannee wrestling coach Joey Phillips had not seen anything like it before.
The Bulldogs’ Marshall White had just lost in the Class 1A state championship match at 157 pounds, missing out on the school’s first title in 11 years, and with it, also losing a chance for the 13th undefeated season in program history.
Yet when Phillips walked out onto the mat at the Silver Spurs Arena in Kissimmee in February to have “the talk” with his star senior, there was no consoling or encouraging needed.
“He immediately, right after the match, said, ‘I’m good,’” Phillips said.
Phillips had to have that talk previously with five other wrestlers who had a state title ripped away in the final match of the season. Those previous state runners-up had been defected, maddened or disappointed.
None had been content or at ease.
But White quickly told Phillips that a state title wasn’t ever his real goal.
“He goes, ‘I did what I wanted to accomplish,’” Phillips recalled. “He said, ‘Four years ago when I started high school I didn’t want to be the best wrestler. I said I wanted to be known as the hardest-working and toughest wrestler that nobody wanted to face.’
“He lived that every single day. His mindset was, ‘Even if you beat me, I’m going to be tougher than any opponent you’ve ever gone against.’ I think he kind of accomplished that.”
That desire, and White’s ability to achieve it, not only had him on the brink of history — his 54 wins would have been the most in Suwannee’s history for an undefeated campaign — but also earned him the title of the Lake City Reporter’s Wrestler of the Year.
“Every day that I showed up, I wouldn’t do anything besides work as hard as I could,” said White, who finished with a 53-1 record. “There were no days where, ‘Oh, I’m sick today, I don’t have to go as hard.’ Or ‘It’s the end of my cut, I’m tired, I don’t have to go as hard.’ Every day I went as hard as I could.”
That mindset was something White certainly embraced. Both he and Phillips said that desire to be the hardest worker is what elevated White from his already stellar level to the brink of a perfect senior campaign. White had qualified for state as a sophomore but dropped both of his matches to be eliminated.
He followed that up with a third-place finish as a junior, losing in an earlier round to First Baptist’s Andrew DiGrigoli before regrouping for a 7-3 win against DiGroli in that third-place match.
White, though, said he believed those past years were ones he spent trying to learn exactly what kind of a wrestler he was and proper technique.
For his last hurrah, he said, he knew exactly what he could rely on on the mat.
“My thing is just dominance,” he said, adding he is an “in your face” wrestler. “That’s just how I wrestle, domination. I just don’t like leaving any questions like who won.”
Phillips, too, said there was no question what White was going to deliver every time he had a chance to step on the mat.
“His biggest thing is from the opening bell to, whether it’s a triple overtime or whatever, it’s the same intensity the entire time,” he said. “It’s just a brutal intensity. He just comes at you and goes, goes, goes for six to nine minutes hard.”
He also constantly delivered wins. Suwannee criss-crossed the state, going everywhere and against everybody. It didn’t matter who White was squared up against, he just kept winning.
That included wins against some of the best from other states as well, including a state champion from Tallassee in Alabama at the Beast of the Beach tournament at Fort Walton Beach.
That tournament, though, is where White really did get upset. While he was fine falling to DiGroli in the state championship match, White was mad that he didn’t get a chance to face Tallassee’s two-time defending undefeated state champion Land Bell, who was a weight class below him.
“He was the most upset I’ve ever seen him because he didn’t get to wrestle that kid,” Phillips said. “He knew for sure he was going to beat that kid. He carried that mindset. He was 46-0 going into that match and wanted the kid who had never lost.
“It’s just a mindset of wins and losses happen but what gets us to those. What did we do correctly and incorrectly that we need to fix?”
That belief also definitely benefited White, who also placed at the Class 2A state weightlifting meet last weekend. White said the two sports were very similar. In both cases, it was just him against himself, basically.
In weightlifting, there is just the lifter and the bar. He viewed his opponents in wrestling much the same way.
“For me, it was just like going out to a (weightlifting) bar,” he said. “I didn’t care who it was, it’s just like the same thing. I’m just going out there and I’m wrestling, I’m not wrestling you. You’re wrestling me.”
That worked all the way until that last match of the year when he squared off against DiGroli for a third time in a rubber match. Even after dropping that deciding match, basically due to a terrible last 30 seconds in the first period when DiGroli scored a takedown and a near fall that turned into a 15-8 win, DiGroli gave White the affirmation he always desired and what he has become accustomed to hearing: that he was the toughest wrestler he’d ever faced.
“We were just talking on the podium, he was telling me I was the strongest kid he ever wrestled,” White said. “That when I tied up with him, he told me he was afraid when I tied up with him because I was the strongest he’s ever tied up with.
“I’ve heard that from pretty much everybody.”
And just in case DiGroli wouldn’t remember him and their state title match already, White made sure it’s a match his opponent never would forget.
As his state title hopes had already firmly slipped out of his grasp, White left his mark in another way.
After earlier rushing in full speed in toward DiGroli, he crashed the bridge of his nose into his opponent, breaking it open. Not wanting the official to call for blood time, White instead began rubbing his face all over DiGroli, in an effort to stay concealed from the official and also to leave that imprint on another opponent on who was the toughest person they’d ever faced..
“He had blood all over his forehead and the side of his face,” White said. “It was pretty funny. I told him that on the podium. He kind of just looked at me weird. I was like, ‘I’m not going to lie, when I noticed my nose was bleeding, I wiped it all over your face.’ He just looked at me.”
Hearing that story didn’t change the way Phillips looked at his star pupil. Instead, it encapsulated exactly who White was on the mat and what kind of wrestler he was: not letting anything slow him down and the willingness to give it his all.
“He’s a worker,” Phillips said. “He likes to work. He likes to get his face in the mud. He likes to get his face dirty.
“I think that’s Marshall in a nutshell.”
ALL-AREA TEAM
106: Eli Jolicoeur
Suwannee, senior
56-3 record, third at Class 1A state meet, Region 1-1A champion, District 2-1A champion.
120: Justin Contreras
Suwannee, senior
25-9 record, sixth at Class 1A state meet, third in Region 1-1A, District 2-1A champion.
125: Bella Guerrier-Lajoir
Columbia, junior
30-12 record, Class 1A state qualifier, fourth in Region 1-1A, District 2-1A runner-up.
126: Rylan Milian
Suwannee, sophomore
27-19 record, Class 1A state qualifier, third in Region 1-1A, third in District 2-1A.
150: Arthur Vanderpool
Suwannee, senior
40-17 record, Class 1A state qualifier, fourth in Region 1-1A, third in District 2-1A.
155: Ja’Niyah Williams
Columbia, senior
22-14 record, Class 1A state qualifier, fourth in Region 1-1A, District 2-1A runner-up.
157: Marshall White
Suwannee, senior
The LCR’s Wrestler of the Year had a 53-1 record and was a Class 1A state runner-up following Region 1-1A and District 2-1A titles.
165: Torynn Johns
Suwannee, senior
31-14 record, Class 1A state qualifier, third in Region 1-1A, District 2-1A champion.
170: Carlee Morrison
Columbia, senior
20-12 record, Class 1A state qualifier, fourth in Region 1-1A, District 2-1A champion.
175: Clay Starling
Suwannee, senior
26-12, Class 1A state qualifier, third in Region 1-1A, District 2-1A runner-up.
190: Landon Slater
Suwannee, junior
43-11 record, one win shy of state in Region 1-1A, District 2-1A champion.
235: Josie Raulerson
Columbia, sophomore
15-5 record, Class 1A state qualifier, Region 1-1A runner-up, District 2-1A champion.
285: Holden Corbin
Suwannee, junior
53-10 record, seventh at Class 1A state meet, Region 1-1A runner-up, District 2-1A champion.
COACH OF THE YEAR
John Wainwright, Suwannee
Led the Bulldogs to third straight Region 1-1A and District 2-1A IBT titles as well as regional and district duals titles for the third year in a row. Suwannee placed ninth at the Class 1A IBT with four wrestlers bringing home state medals after advancing to the state duals semifinals earlier in the season.