May River Wrestling Rises: Sharks Rally to Historic State Championship
It was early September, and Beau Gwynn was anchoring a dominant offensive line that was leading a resurgence for May River High School’s football team when he appeared on the LowcoSports Lowdown to report on the Sharks’ other fall sports teams and field a few questions from the show’s hosts.
When the topic turned to the upcoming wrestling season, Gwynn made a prediction.
“Don’t be surprised if you see 14 dudes with rings on their fingers come February,” he said, vowing to trim himself down to 285 pounds so he could fill his spot in the lineup at heavyweight.
A little over five months later, Gwynn was preparing to take the mat Saturday at Dreher High School when another pin — Laurens’ fourth of the day — put the Sharks in a 24-point hole with just five weight classes remaining and a maximum of 30 points outstanding.
The margin for error was nonexistent. May River had to win all five matches, and they needed bonus points.
Gwynn turned the tide with a technical fall, and the Sharks’ shed full of hammers in the lower weights took care of the rest, as Stephano Calderon (106), Ryan Seman (113), and Marcus Foulk (120) all backed up their lofty spots in the state rankings with dominant wins to pull May River within 35-33 with one bout remaining.
And it all fell on 126-pounder Liam Engblom, an unsung junior relative to some of his peers who has had to battle for a spot in the lineup.
“I couldn’t imagine being in that position,” Gwynn said. “My stomach would be curdling. I couldn’t do it.”
But Gwynn knew exactly what his teammate needed to hear before the biggest match of his life.
“I said, ‘Hey, you just go out and wrestle your match,’” Gwynn recalled. “We had been pointing out all week to Liam that the kid gets tired fast, so you just wrestle your match, you stay in it. … And that’s what he does, and he goes out and gets a win for us to win the state finals. That’s what it’s all about. It’s about my teammates who might not get all the shine, but when it comes down to the biggest moments they produce, and that’s what it’s all about.”
Engblom aced the final, controlling the match from the outset and easily securing an 8-1 decision to lift the Sharks to a 36-35 win and claim the program’s first state title — and the first for a team from Beaufort County since Battery Creek won back-to-back Class 2A titles in 2014 and 2015.
“It went from pretty quiet to pretty loud starting around heavyweight,” Powell said. “Wrestling is a special sport, and this was a perfect example of it.”
It represents a breakthrough for a May River program that has been knocking on the door in recent years. Coach Ashley Powell’s teams lost to the Eastside dynasty in the Class 4A finals in 2021 and 2022 before being bumped from the bracket by Lugoff-Elgin the past two seasons.
This time, the Sharks made it to the mountaintop, and with only three seniors in the lineup — Gwynn, Darion White, and top-ranked 175-pounder Josh Echeverria — and an army of understudies, it feels like another dynasty is being born in the Lowco.
“Beaustradamus” thinks so.
“I’m one-for-one, and I’m going to call this again,” Gwynn said. “Don’t be surprised if come next February the Sharks are state champs again.”
Justin Jarrett is the sports editor of The Island News and is the founder of Lowco Sports. He has a passion for sports and community journalism and a questionable sense of humor.
