Chapin, River Bluff, Gilbert advance to state wrestling semifinals

Posted 2/6/23

The three remaining Chronicle Country teams in the S.C. High School League wrestling playoffs are all a match away from the finals.

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Chapin, River Bluff, Gilbert advance to state wrestling semifinals

Posted

The three remaining Chronicle Country teams in the S.C. High School League wrestling playoffs are all a match away from the finals.

Chapin, Gilbert, and River Bluff all won its respective third-round matches at home. All three will now head on the road for the Feb. 8 semifinals and a berth at the Feb. 11 state championships at Dreher High School.

Chapin 36, T.L. Hanna 32

The top-ranked Eagles found themselves in a 20-0 hole after dropping the first five matches to the Yellow Jackets. The Anderson visitors were making their first-ever appearance in the third round.

Pinfall victories in the higher weight classes enabled Chapin to make up the deficit as it won seven of the last nine matches. Pinfall wins by Omari Washington and Preston White and a one-sided decision victory by Bobby Walker enabled the Eagles to surge ahead 36-26 with one match left.

Afterwards, head coach Ken Wilson said the ability of the lighter weight competititors to avoid pinfalls was key in allowing Chapin to come back.

“The whole team battled,” he said. “That team battled, too. That tough. Places I thought we’d pin them for sure, we didn’t get pins. They were tough.”

Chapin will now travel to third-ranked Fort Mill for the Class 5A Upper State final and a chance at its first state final appearance since 2018.

“I told them at the beginning of the year, I didn’t write region champ. I didn’t write state champ. I just wrote ‘be at our best,” Wilson said. “That’s who they are. Wrestle as good as we can. We had kids to get injured, but these guys don’t make excuses. They just put some of it in and try to work.”

River Bluff 49, Carolina Forest 15

The sixth-ranked Gators advanced to the Class 5A Lower State finals for the fourth time in seven years.

They will face a familiar foe in second-ranked Summerville, who defeated them 64-9 in last year’s second-round matchup.

Gilbert 40, Waccamaw 39

For the second straight year, the fourth-ranked Indians defeated the Warriors in the third round of the Class 3A Lower State playoffs.

They will also face a familiar foe on the road in third-ranked Aynor in the Lower State final. The Blue Jackets visited Gilbert last year and won last year’s Lower State final 44-27.

Chapin, River Bluff, Gilbert, wrestling, Wilson

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