State Wrestling Recap: A Pair Of Winning Queens On The Mat

One is a six-year veteran of the mat wars in Sequatchie County, while the other is relatively new to the sport but both were crowned state champions last Saturday night at the TSSAA State Girls Wrestling Championship at the Williamson County Ag Expo Center in Franklin.

Helping christen the newest TSSAA sport, Katie Brock of Sequatchie County and Abby Mainzer of St. Andrew’s-Sewanee were two of the 10 weight champions in the inaugural year of girls wrestling as a varsity sport in Tennessee and the only champions to pin all their opponents.

Here’s Their Story:

* Katie Brock – 112 Pounds – Sequatchie County HS

Coached by former William Blount wrestler Junior Amburn, Brock, who has been wrestling since the fifth grade, posted an impressive 27-0 record this season (26 pins) and is 78-2 in three years on varsity.

Her only two regular season losses were to Lily Homa of Science Hill, but Brock avenged both those losses by defeating Homa in the TSSAA girls’ invitational tournaments in 2013 and 2014.

Also talented off the mat, Brock, who holds a 3.5 grade point average in the classroom, was crowned queen of the Sequatchie County Fair in January and helped her home county be recognized as “Fairest of the Fair” at the state county fair competition.

Brock and her teammates Taylor Johnson (5th place) and Brianna Stevens (6th place) led their team to a top 10 team finish (7th out of 39 schools) with Science Hill winning the team championship.

* Abby Mainzer – 185 pounds – St. Andrew’s-Sewanee

With an individual state championship on the line and a state runner-up team finish hanging in the balance, SAS junior Abby Mainzer found herself on her back, in the last girls’ match of the state tournament, but found a way to recover and eventually pin her Montgomery Central opponent for the title.

Only in her second year of wrestling and tipping the scales 20 pounds under the heaviest weight division, Mainzer’s six teams points for the pin in the finals helped secure the school’s first state runner-up team finish (behind champion Science Hill) for either boys or girls wrestling in a sport that started at St. Andrews in the early 1950s.

“To win an state championship and help my team to second place is great as I enjoy wrestling since you can compete as an individual and also help your team have success,” said Mainzer who is an A&B student and also competes in mountain biking and basketball for SAS.

“Once she was able to get off her back, she smelled blood and went for the pin and got it,” said SAS coach Mclain Still who wrestled on three state championship teams (and earned three state medals) at Baylor nearly a decade ago under national wrestling hall of fame coaches Jim Morgan and Schaack Van Deusen.

All three SAS wrestlers earned medals as Kia Whitman took third and Zaferah Fortune placed fourth.

Manzier is the school's third state wrestling champion joining Bill Harlow (1962) and David Hutt (1971). Harlow went on to win a national prep title in 1962, an NCAA title in 1966 for Oklahoma State and a world silver medal for the U.S. in the early 1970s. 

  

contact B.B. Branton at william.branton@comcast.net