Soddy Daisy coach Steve Henry remembers vividly the feeling he had after the championship finals of the TSSAA State Duals wrestling tournament at Franklin last year.

The Trojans ended Bradley's long, dual-meet winning streak during a regular-season match, but the Bears came back to win another Duals title and there was nothing close about it.

Soddy Daisy is ranked second in the state behind Christian Brothers, a tough D-II team from Memphis.

The Trojans have the unofficial label as "tournament favorite," but there are 15 other teams who also have their eyes focused on the championship trophy.

Cleveland is the other local team in the AAA division while A-AA teams include defending champion Central and Hixson, a team that finished third last year after winning the previous two.

McCallie and Baylor are the two local teams in the D-II competition.

It all begins at the Williamson County Expo Center on Friday afternoon with the first two rounds in all classifications.

Soddy Daisy faces Wilson Central in the opening match at 4:30 EST while Cleveland will meet Blackman at 6:30.  Central will be challenged by Page at 4:30 while Hixson has to wait until 6:30 to meet Sullivan East.

Soddy Daisy's Henry, Cleveland's Eric Phillips, Central's Marquis Dotson and Hixson's Garrick Hall all know how important it is for their teams to stay focused on the match at hand.

Lots of folks are anticipating a Soddy Daisy-Cleveland final in AAA Saturday night and they're hoping that a Central-Hixson match is in the works as well, but there's a lot of preliminary work for every team.  To get sidetracked for even a minute is a great way to be sent to the consolation rounds and none of these coaches want to think about that scenario.

"We're excited and looking forward to it," said Central's Dotson, who was an assistant last year when the Purple Pounders prevailed.

"We have Page in the first round, so we just need to come out and wrestle like we've been taught.  Every other team is gunning for us, so we can't sit back and rest.  We've had a good week and we just hope to carry it over to the weekend," Dotson added.

"We've wrestled well all year as we've competed with the best.  We just have to take it one match at a time.  We lost to Hixson by five points in the regular season, but we had to forfeit two matches that night.  We have everyone healthy for once, so we'll see what happens," the former Cleveland wrestler added.

Central enters the competition with a 19-5 record.  Those losses came against Bradley, Soddy Daisy, Cleveland, Heritage and Hixson.  If the Pounders beat Page, they would get the winner of Sycamore and Stone Memorial.

Hixson had the misfortune of being put in the same side of the bracket with Central last year.  The Wildcats lost to the Pounders in the semifinals, but bounced back to claim third after taking first the two years before that. 

Hixson was the runner-up to Notre Dame in 2009, so this group of Wildcats have a lot of experience in this tournament.

"We don't know a lot about Sullivan East, but that's who we're focused on," said Hall before he and his team got  on the road Thursday afternoon.

"We just have to compete.  Our guys know they just have to do their best for six minutes and the results will take care of themselves.

"We want to prove that we belong there.  A lot of teams don't show us much respect, but we need to win twice on Friday night if we want to be in the finals on Saturday night.  We just want to have a good showing," Hall added.

Hixson won 23 matches this year with the only loss coming against Bradley.

If Hixson beats Sullivan East, the Wildcats would then face the winner of East Literature and Pigeon Forge in the other semifinal match Friday night about 8:30.

Soddy Daisy's Henry can still feel the pain from last year's championship against a Bradley team that made the Trojans look like a bunch of rookies.  He knows better than anyone that there are no guarantees against any team in any round.

While the A-AA field only has eight teams, the AAA bracket features 16 entries.  Wilson Central is first up for the Trojans.

"We're ready to go.  I'm not nervous, but it's time to compete and we're ready.  I'll never forget a bit of advice that Baylor coach Luke Worsham shared with me.  He told me to just worry about what my team does.  If we have to depend on what another team does to win, we're in trouble.  I've remembered that for a long time and that's what I keep telling my kids," Henry explained.

"We're heading up later today and we hope to get in a light workout Friday morning just to work the kinks out.  We just need to do what we're capable of doing.  Strange things can happen, but we haven't talked a lot about later matches.

"We don't want to rely on emotion, but we're used to being the underdog.  I don't think there's any question that we deserve to be there, but we have everything to gain and everything to lose," Henry added.

The second round would bring the Clarksville-Powell winner while a possible semifinal match would have Maryville, Independence, Dobyns-Bennett or Cordova.

Cleveland's Phillips knows that his team has a lot of talent and should be favored to reach Saturday's final round.  His kids started believing last year when they won the traditional state title over Bradley and Soddy Daisy in the closest tournament in recent memory.

However, the Blue Raiders lost to Bradley in the semifinal round of the Region Duals and didn't even advance to the State Duals.

"I think we're ready to wrestle," Phillips said Thursday afternoon on the bus ride to Franklin.

"We're in a pretty good place right now.  All in all, we're doing about as well as can be expected at this point.  Blackman has a lot of tough kids, so they are no first-round slouch.  They were region champs and we weren't.

"It's a tough draw, but it's fair.  Tough roads make you better. We can't focus  on anyone other than Blackman.  We know we'd like another shot at Soddy Daisy, but we have a lot of work to do before we even think about that," he added.

The Blue Raiders enter the weekend at 17-4 with losses to Soddy Daisy, Christian Brothers, Pope and Heritage.  Cleveland would face the winner of Germantown and Ravenwood in Friday's quarterfinals while Science Hill looks to be the better team in the upper half of Cleveland's bracket.

Central is the defending A-AA champion while Bradley was the AAA winner last year.  Baylor is the defending champion for D-II.

Tickets for each day are $10 while there is also a $5 charge for parking.

(Email John Hunt at nomarathonmoose@comcast.net)