Before even a single finals match began March 3 at the ACC Wrestling Championships, N.C. State had already clinched the team title. After sending eight out of its 10 wrestlers to the championship finals and senior 133-pounder Garrett Cummings having taken third in his weight class, the Wolfpack led second-place Maryland by an insurmountable 27 points.
So once the finals matches got started, the only question left to answer was how many individual champs would State have.
“We couldn’t have wrestled any better,” coach Carter Jordan, who is in third season at the helm after he was an assistant for seven years, said “It’s one of the best efforts I’ve seen in the 10 years I’ve been here. I’m just really really proud of them.”
Freshman 125-pounder Taylor Cummings got State started in the finals with a 1-0 win against Maryland’s James Knox, avenging a regular-season loss. After that the Pack won at 141-pounds, 149-pounds, 197-pounds and heavyweight.
Redshirt sophomore Ryan Goodman, who won the 197-pound title bout in overtime, was named co-Outstanding Wrestler with Virginia Tech’s Jon Bonilla-Bonham, who upset State junior Kody Hamrah in the finals.
“It was a crazy match,” Goodman said about his finals match against Maryland’s Hudson Taylor. “And on a 1-to-10 scale of being tired, I was a 10. So to come out on top feels so good.”
For Goodman, the Outstanding Wrestler award was his second in a row. But this year’s, he said, was special considering the competition.
“It means a lot, especially since I was competing against all the guys on my team that won championships,” he said. “Any one of them could’ve won it as well.”
After the team posed for a picture at the podium with the ACC championship trophy, the reality of his first conference title finally started to sink in for Jordan. He even got nostalgic immediately afterward as he reflected on all those who had supported him, including former Pack coach Bob Guzzo.
“It’s a dream come true,” Jordan said. “I feel like I’m living a dream.”
For State, the championship was its 14th, but its first since 2004. North Carolina won the two titles in between.
But this year when the final tally was in, the Pack had beaten the Terrapins by 36 and the Tar Heels by 43. Both of those teams had beaten State once in the regular season.
“That shows just how much we stepped it up,” Goodman said. “In the second half of the year we just started turning it up, and we realized what our potential was.”
The conference champions qualified for the national tournament, which begins Thursday in Detroit.
