Head Coach John Kincade and his two varsity wrestling teams, girls and boys, have been hard at work since their season started last month. More recently, after the state championship football game on December 7th, several victorious Bulldogs traded their jerseys for singlets and made the transition from artificial turf to the wrestling mat.
A native Oklahoman, Coach Kincade had a long and successful history as a prep and college wrestler, then founded the GHS boys mat program in 2012, winning several championships since. Within a few years he also added female athletes to his stable of wrestlers, and the girls program has grown steadily ever since. Both squads have acquitted themselves well so far this season, despite being shorthanded due to injuries and sharing athletes with their gridiron schoolmates.
The Bulldogs and Lady Bulldogs have already competed in four events with another tournament slated for this weekend at Cabot High School. After the semester and holiday break in classes, Greenwood returns to live action at Springdale Har-Ber on January 3-4. A brief summary of the early results are provided below and Coach Kincade recently talked about his teams and some of his key wrestlers.
Early Results
After warming up with a couple pre-season events in Tulsa and Warner, Oklahoma before Thanksgiving, the two Greenwood teams officially opened their 2024-25 campaign at home against Class 6A Fayetteville on December 5th. Just days before hosting the Purple Dogs in a dual meet, Greenwood also hosted the Bulldog Brawl Novice tournament for youth wrestlers, part of Coach Kincade’s long-standing effort to promote the sport of wrestling in general and provide a steady stream of future athletes for his own program. The event drew the participation of hundreds of youth wrestlers from multiple states.
Other early season meets included victories over both Searcy and Russellville and competing at Cassville, Missouri, and Henryetta, Oklahoma. Within the last week Kincade took his teams to Tulsa for a big meet last Saturday featuring some of the top teams in the Sooner State, then hosted Shiloh Christian in a dual meet this last Tuesday.
“Fayetteville was our first [dual] meet, and our first actual tournament was in Cassville, Missouri,” said Kincade of his teams’ early schedule. Greenwood fared well against Fayetteville despite starting the season shorthanded, unable to fill out all 14 weight categories in the boys competition. “We got beat, but at the same time I didn’t have five guys in our lineup, and we just barely got beat. Our lineup is a whole lot different now than it was then. Getting our football players out [for wrestling] is a big thing. They will all be starters,” said the coach before listing them by name.
“Rhett Holloway will wrestle at 138 pounds. Last year he beat the eventual state champion in the regional tournament. He’s a good athlete,” said Kincade of the up-and-coming sophomore. “We’re also senior laden in our upper weights. We have a lot of experience there. At 215 pounds will be Zach Edwards, and Eddy Castelo came out too. Those three will make a big difference for us.” Castelo transferred from Fort Smith Northside to Greenwood last spring.
Both Edwards and Costelo were senior starters and key players for the state championship football team. A linebacker, Edwards returns with a lot of mat experience while Castelo has never wrestled before, but has trained as a boxer, which will help him in wrestling. He also set a new GHS weightlifting record in the bench press earlier this year. “He’s got great [footwork], his stamina is good, and we can teach him two or three things, plus he’s an athlete. We’ve seen that on the football field,” said Kincade of the offensive and defensive lineman.
Another heavyweight that has impressed his head coach is junior Xander McDonald. “He’s another kid that’s been doing well. He just came out last year and we’re trying to develop him. With both of them competing against each other, it’s going to help them both get better. It’s going to help us having [good] athletes at those upper weights. We feel pretty good about what we have coming back this season. This weekend we’ll have the whole lineup except at 190 pounds. [Senior] Keagan Dust is out right now with an injury.”
The coach also tried to explain the complicated metrics used in in the sport to determine the weight categories each wrestler can compete in and when they can do so, things like hydration tests and body fat measurements, all of it analyzed by a sophisticated computer program. Such are the requirements and details facing wrestling coaches across the nation these days. “We didn’t have [senior] Pablo Ambriz because his hydration test wouldn’t allow him to wrestle at 150 pounds until this week. When we wrestled Shiloh Christian the other night, he was finally able to compete,” said the coach of Ambriz, one of his returning starters from the previous two years.
Kincade then ran down the entire starting lineup for the Bulldogs. “We’ll have Frankie Yang at 106 pounds and Dylan Friend at 113, both ninth graders. At 120 pounds we have Jonathan Martinez, who was a state champion last year at 106. At 126 is [junior] Ashton Neece and at 132 is [sophomore] Brayden Stockton, who took third in the state last year. At 138 is [sophomore] Rhett Holloway and at 144 is [sophomore] Logan Gunderson. At 150 is Pablo Ambriz, a senior, and at 157 we have Landon Rofkahr, also a senior. At 165 we have Cade Johnson, a senior, and at 175 we’ve got Wyatt Thornsberry, also a senior. At 190 is Keagan Dust, who is also a senior but is out right now. At 215 is [senior] Michael Atkinson who has done a good job. And at heavyweight we have junior Xander McDonald. When we get our lineup the way we think it needs to be, I think we’ll be halfway decent,” said the coach modestly.
Of course, as in all high school sports, the regular season is all about preparing for and qualifying for the postseason and a crack at earning a state championship, which Kincade’s teams have already done multiple times over the last decade. But the competition has gotten tougher in recent years with the explosive growth of wrestling across the state. Last year the Bulldogs finished third in Class 5A behind neighboring Van Buren and Lakeside High School in Hot Springs. While they don’t have a traditional conference to compete in, there will be a dual state tournament and regional tournaments in February to determine which teams qualify for the state tournament at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The Bulldogs have won several dual state championships, though the Arkansas Activities Association does not sanction the tournament.
The dual state event will be February 8th with the girls regional tournament a week later on the 15th followed by the boys regionals on the 22nd. The top four teams from the north and south regions qualify for the state tournament to be held February 28th and March 1st. Including this weekend’s competition at Cabot, the Bulldogs and Lady Bulldogs have 11 meets remaining on their schedule before the postseason begins.
Cassville, Missouri
Two weeks ago, at Cassville, MO, the Bulldogs finished as runners-up. The two-day tournament was held Friday and Saturday, December 6-7, and coincided with the 6A state championship football game between Greenwood and Shiloh Christian. “It was a great weekend of wrestling in Cassville!” said Coach Kincade in a Facebook post. “Our boys finished as the team runners-up behind Cassville. I was sure proud of our wrestlers and the way they competed.
“Having been a football coach for 32 years, it was a tough decision not being able to be at our state championship football game where three of our wrestling starters are on the football team, as well as our assistant coach, Hunter Moreton. I owed it to our seniors to make the tough decision. It’s the price you pay being a multi-sport [athlete]. At least I got to watch parts of the game on my phone. Thank you, PBS, for televising it!
“[At Cassville] we had four champions with Dylan Friend, Brayden Stockton, Landon Rofkahr, and Wyatt Thornsberry. Jonathan Martinez and Ashton Neece both received third-place medals. It was a great weekend to be a Bulldog and congratulations to Bulldogs football on another amazing season and state championship! We are ready to get you guys in the room and round out our lineup!” he added, referring to the handful of footballers who will now join the wrestling team.
Kincade also extolled the accomplishments of his female wrestlers. “On Friday we had five girls place!” he revealed in his post. “Mariah Bartok was the champion, Brianne Mancini was second, Isabella Thomas third, Afton Bridges fourth, and Marin Youngblood placed fifth.” (Keep reading for more information on the GHS ladies).
Ray Nunneley Memorial, Tulsa, OK
Last Saturday in Tulsa the Bulldogs finished fifth overall behind Sand Springs and Bixby, two well-known wrestling schools in Oklahoma. Sand Springs garnered 595 total match points to 576 for second-place Bixby. Next came Edison Prep (367) and Bishop Kelley (269), both Oklahoma schools, with Greenwood at 228 points in a field that included 32 teams. The Bulldogs were also shy five starters in their lineup and still finished in the top five. The GHS ladies also placed well, coming in 6th overall with 86 points among the 18 teams that scored points.
For the Greenwood varsity boys, junior Ashton Neece (126 pounds) and senior Wyatt Thornsberry (175) tied for the team lead with 20 points each. Freshman Dylan Friend (113) was next for the Bulldogs with 19 points, along with sophomore Rhett Holloway (138) and senior Jeremy Johnson (165). Senior Landon Rofkahr earned 17 points at 157 pounds and sophomore Brayden Stockton scored nine points at 132 pounds. Junior heavyweight Xander McDonald (285) added four points to the team total while Maddox Adams (120) earned one point. Sophomore Noah Gilbert and senior Michael Atkinson also competed but did not score.
Among the Lady Bulldogs, sophomore Afton Bridges outperformed even her male peers by scoring 28 points. Junior Farah Crossno added 19 points while fellow classmate Brianna Mancini earned 18 points. Senior Jocelyn Martinez garnered 13 points and junior Miriah Bartok scored eight points. While discussing his Lady Bulldogs, the coach lamented the fact that the program seems to have reached a plateau and leveled off.
Lady Bulldogs
“I wish I had tons more girls,” said Kincade. “I have 11 girls altogether. But I’ve always said if we could just have a complete lineup, we would have a chance [to win it all].” Just like the boys, there are 14 weight classes for girls, only the weight ranges are different. The coach also identified several of his top female wrestlers, starting with Farah Crossno, whose older brother, Tyler, won multiple state titles for the Bulldogs. “She was a state champion her freshman year and last year took third place, so she’s trying to get back and win that thing again.” Crossno will be wrestling this season at 100 pounds after competing at 105 pounds last season.
“At 115 pounds is senior Jocelyn Martinez and at 120 is [junior] Mariah Bartok. At 155 pounds is [junior] Marin Youngblood. She’s a first-year wrestler who is really coming on and doing well. At 170 pounds is [sophomore] Ashton Bridges. She’s placed just about everywhere we’ve been. She placed at Cassville, MO, in Henryetta, OK, and won the championship at Tulsa. Then we have Brianne Mancini at heavyweight, though she only weighs around 193. But she took second in Tulsa and has done really well. Our girls are doing good. At Tulsa we finished in sixth place and only had six girls wrestling. All our girls are scoring. If we had 14 girls, it would be different,” said the coach.
“It’s really tough because Greenwood is so competitive in girls volleyball and basketball, so I’m looking for girls who aren’t doing anything. Afton Bridges is in band. Brianne Mancini was our manager last year, and she came out this year as a wrestler and is tearing it up. But we have some younger girls who are coming up as well.”
Final Thoughts
Overall, the head coach feels that his teams are well-positioned to make a significant postseason run in both the dual state tournament and the AAA sanctioned state tournament at UALR. “We beat Searcy and Russellville in duals, and we were pretty shorthanded in both of those, so to win those was a big deal. Once we get into January and get our lineup where it needs to be, I think we’re going to qualify for dual state and we’re going to be a tough team to beat,” offered Kincade.
“I also feel we’re going to be tough as an individual team,” he continued. “We’re going to have a lot of guys who can qualify. We’ve got seniors from 150 pounds all the way up to heavyweight, and that makes a lot of difference when you’ve got young men going against guys who are a year or two younger than them. We’ve got good senior leadership and smart kids.”
To emphasize his point, the coach mentioned that Cade Johnson just got accepted to a prestigious school in Massachusetts, only the third Arkansan to ever do so. Two other former GHS wrestlers are currently at West Point and the Air Force Academy. At least one present-day team member has scored a 35 on the college prep ACT exam. “That says a lot about our kids,” said the coach with understandable pride. “They’re becoming police officers and military guys, and being productive, and I’m happier about that than anything. I’m proud of that.”
Kincade’s staff remains the same as in recent years with Hunter Moreton serving as his assistant coach, though he is yet to join the team after the end of football season. Robert Moore is a registered volunteer coach. Former GHS wrestler Caleb Erskine and his wife, Ashley, are also deeply involved with both GHS squads, especially Kincade’s youth program. Greenwood’s next home meet in the P.E. gym on campus will be January 16th against Van Buren, the defending state champions in 5A.