Fire up the grill, drop the tailgates, brew the coffee and open the doughnuts – it’s time to celebrate. Once again, the Clay Middle School mother hens have hatched out another batch of champions. This time it was a wrestling team who punched their ticket to the top of the podium.

Saturday was the end of the season for the Mustang powerhouse at the CWVAC wrestling tournament, basically the state championship for the middle school wrestlers of the region. All season the Mustangs have been harder to beat than a four legged man in a butt kicking contest, and this tournament would be no different.  Eight teams participated in the event, and as the tournament progressed throughout the morning, the Mustang wrestlers were carving notches in the championship trophy.  When it came to the final rounds, Clay had four wrestling for 3rd and 4th and seven wrestling for 1st place. It was a neck and neck race to the mountain of gold between Clay, Braxton and Summersville.

Here’s how it played out – Lucas Coleman took 2nd place at 78 pounds,  Jake Legg took 1st place at 84 pounds,  Lakin Taylor took 3rd place at 90 pounds,  Ethan Quinn took 3rd place at 95 pounds, Owen Bass took 3rd place at 116 pounds,  Hunter Thacker took 4th place at 123 pounds, Ethan Cunningham took first place at 128 pounds, Bo Roat took 1st place at 135 pounds, Gene Sams took 1st place at 145 pounds, Noah Casto took 1st place at 155 pounds,  Ethan Morris took 1st place at 171 pounds and Tyler Adkins took 1st at 285 pounds.  As far as the team ranking, Clay was CWVAC champions by racking up 219 points.  Braxton was second with 179.5 points and Summersville Middle rounded out the top three with 150 points.

It was an awesome year for the Mustangs. It has been quite a while, about 10 years or so, since they smelled the sweet taste of a CWVAC championship.  Congratulations to the CCMS Mustangs for a great finish to a great year. With most of the boys coming back next year, time will only tell just how good this team will be.