Cleveland High School Cheerleaders Olivia Congdon and Gincy Pendergrass have been cheering for the history-making Blue Raiders wrestling team since middle school and have never seen the team lose. Both will attend the University of Tennessee later this year.
When the Cleveland High School Blue Raiders won their seventh consecutive TSSAA dual state championship on Saturday at the Williamson County Ag Center in Franklin, two wrestling cheerleaders who had been cheering since the sixth grade – from middle school to high school - also celebrated that they had never seen the team lose a dual match from middle school to high school.
Gincy Pendergrass and Olivia Congdon, both Cleveland seniors, began cheering for the wrestlers seven years ago at Cleveland Middle School. The best friends admit they had no idea that by the time they neared their high school graduations they would watch so many seasons of non-stop dominance (141 consecutive high school victories) that resulted in the longest winning streak in state history. Overall, Cleveland has wrestled in the finals 16 times in 17 years, winning 11 of them (70 percent of the time).
“We were both born in Cleveland and would have loved our team regardless of how many wins and losses they had,” said Gincy. “But it makes it so much more exciting when you go into a season knowing that your wrestlers are the best in Tennessee and they are going to beat anybody that challenges them. For three years we never saw a loss at Cleveland Middle School and by the time this year’s tournament concluded, we watched four years at Cleveland High and never saw a dual-meet loss.”
Gincy was recently accepted into the University of Tennessee nursing program. Olivia was accepted as a pre-med student. They plan to be roommates in the fall.
Olivia agreed with Gincy that cheering for Cleveland during the winning streak was an honor, especially during the recent 2023-2024 undefeated season where the team was ranked No. 1 from beginning to end.
“When this started we weren’t thinking about being part of history,” said Olivia. “We were cheering because we love Cleveland. But as the years went by we realized that something special was happening and the winning just never stopped. It’s pretty amazing.”
Also watching from the sidelines on Saturday in Franklin was Joe Blair, the TSSAA’s assistant executive director who is also in charge of wrestling for the organization. Blair is a former Cleveland wrestler who graduated from Cleveland High School.
Eric Mountain, currently the head wrestling coach at East Hamilton High School, was the coach of the Cleveland Middle School Blue Raiders when Gincy and Olivia began cheering. Looking back, he says he didn’t know what the next seven years would hold.
“I have seen the whole growth of the Cleveland wrestling program start in the beginning from a good team to the dynasty it is now,” said Mountain, who began his coaching career as a volunteer assistant in 2004. “I remember when Cleveland High School won the traditional state championship in 2011 and I knew we had created something very special that was going to last for a very long time.”
Mountain emphasized that Cleveland’s dominance didn’t happen overnight.
“The long-term success of the wrestling program has been due to a lot of coaches, wrestlers, parents, and supporters working hard and investing a lot of time to build a culture of champions,” said Mountain. “During my time as the head coach at Cleveland Middle School, we had a dual record of 227-12 with nine undefeated seasons. That doesn’t just happen by accident.”
Joey Knox became the head coach of the Cleveland High School wrestling team in 2017, although he began at Cleveland as an assistant coach in 2014. Prior to his arrival at Cleveland, Knox was head coach at Chattanooga Central and won two consecutive state championships in the TSSAA Small School division.
“In 2017, Cleveland took second place at the TSSAA State Championship, but since then we have won the state tournament every year for the last seven years,” Knox said. “Over the last seven years Cleveland wrestling has had a 185-3 record with a current win streak of 141. In the last seven years, we have also put six wrestlers into Division 1 wrestling programs and maintained an average team GPA above 3.5 every year.”
Knox says he is thankful to the people who helped make the history-making winning streak possible.
“Coaching at Cleveland has been one of the most rewarding and challenging experiences of my life,” Knox said. “There is no way that I could have done it without the support that I have gotten while I have been here. The Cleveland Wrestling Family is the real reason that we have had this much success, and we couldn't do it without them.”
Businessman Allan Jones – also the grandfather of Gincy Pendergrass – is credited with starting Cleveland’s road to the record books with his famous “Six-year plan” that was created to start with the 2006-2007 season.
Jones said that prior to 2006, the only thing people knew about wrestling in Cleveland was Steve Logsdon having four undefeated seasons with Bradley Central High School and 17 years without a loss at home.
Jones said his plan was designed to help Cleveland defeat Bradley by the 2012-2013 season and it began when he learned that Al Miller – Cleveland’s hall of fame head coach – was retiring. The businessman, who has been called the biggest supporter of high school wrestling in the country, personally hired a top collegiate coaches recruiting firm to find a new head coach.
“People told us it couldn't be done, but we couldn’t accept that Bradley beat Cleveland for 19 years in a row and they were going to keep on doing it unless we could find a way to turn it around,” Jones said. “We also knew the key was in having a strong kids club, so we quickly founded the Higher Calling Kids Wrestling Club.”
Jones had a three-pronged approach to winning that involved the kids club, middle school and high school wrestling programs. After the Blue Raiders win in Franklin, Jones gave tremendous credit to Higher Calling Head Coach Josh Bosken.
“Bosken puts in an incredible amount of time and travels all over the country with the kids club,” said Jones. “In the meantime, he is also the head coach of the Cleveland High girls wrestling team that celebrated its second consecutive state championship this year.”
Jones has turned heads by financially supporting both the Cleveland and Bradley kids clubs, because he says “I learned that Cleveland needs Bradley the same way that Baylor needs McCallie.”
The businessman added, “After all these years and so many victories, we celebrate that this is the #1 wrestling town in the state of Tennessee - and any team wanting to win a state championship must come through Cleveland first.”