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Alleghany high school is a small 1A school located in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. Alleghany has a long and rich history of excellence in the sport of wrestling. The high school program has won nine North Carolina high school state titles during its existence; this includes five dual team titles and three individual state tournament titles. The high school program started its humble beginning in 1967 under the tutelage of Coach Ron Matlock. The following year, 1968, the team had eight wrestlers to qualify for the state tournament. Two of these qualifiers placed in the state tournament with one of them being a finalist. The success continued the next year with two more state placers. After the 1970 season, Coach Matlock stepped down as head coach and in stepped. Coach Phil Bowers. Coach Bowers had limited success with the program during his tenure as head coach. The program hit its lowest point when Coach Bowers discontinued the program in 1974. His reason for discontinue the program was that he could not fill a full team. Luckily for the program, a new young coach in the name of Jim Smith took over in 1975. Coach Smith's team won the conference tournament during his first year, and his team won both the conference regular season and tournament titles the very next year. By the third year, Coach Smith had his first wrestler to qualify for the state tournament. In 1983, Coach Smith had a couple of wrestlers to place at the state tournament, and the program continued to get stronger with each passing year. The 1987 year proved to be a pivotal turning point for the wrestling program. That year Alleghany had its first state champion in Glenn Edwards. Within another two years, Alleghany had won its very first state team championship (1989). This was also the last year for Coach Smith. Coach Smith hired a new assistant coach in 1989 during his team’s championship run. The new assistant coach was Paul Crouse. Coach Crouse was an Alleghany alumnus, and he had wrestled for Appalachian State in college. Coach Crouse had also been involved with another state championship team the previous year, as an assistant coach with Mitchell high school. In 1990, Coach Crouse took over the reins of the Alleghany wrestling program. Under Coach Crouse’s guidance the program went to new levels. One of the first steps that Coach Crouse took to improve the program was to start a middle school program. He recruited his younger brother Greg Crouse to help run the middle school program in 1991. With the feeder program setup for the high school, the success continued for Coach Crouse. He had several wrestlers to become state champions and placers throughout the early nineties. He also won a couple of regional titles during this time period and came close to winning states. In 1995, Coach Crouse took the next step to raise the level of wrestling for the high school program. That year Alleghany Wrestling Club was created. The wrestling club served several purposes. First, It gave the high school kids a place to practice and wrestle during the off-season, and it also provided an opportunity for younger kids in elementary school (K-6) to become familiar with the sport of wrestling. Two years after starting the wrestling club, Alleghany fielded one of its best teams ever (1996-97 season) that year Coach Crouse improved his team's wrestling schedule. The schedule included the Tiger Holiday Classic tournament at Chapel Hill and a dual match with power-house Grundy high school out of Virginia. Alleghany finished 3rd at the Tiger Holiday Classic. They were the top finisher for North Carolina in the tournament. Grundy high school was ranked in the top-ten in the nation in several national wrestling publications during the 1996-97 year. Alleghany traveled to Grundy for a dual and came away with a close loss. The match was very competitive, but Grundy was able to pull away in the upper-weights with help from USA Wrestling Junior National Champion Luke Owens. Alleghany finished the season as state dual champions and state individual tournament champions. These were the first state championships for Coach Crouse as head coach, but they weren’t the last. Coach Crouse's teams continued with "State Titles" in 1998, 1999, 2002. Coach Crouse stepped down as head coach in 2003 after coaching the team to a runners-up finish in the state duals. Coach Crouse finished his coaching career with: three state dual titles, two individual state tournament titles, two state runners-up finish -- one in the state individual and one in the state duals. He also captured six regional titles and three regional runners-up finishes. Coach Crouse had nine wrestlers to capture eleven individual state titles, and one wrestler, Matthew Linker, to become a USA Cadet National All-American. By 2002, Coach Crouse knew that his time as head coach would be coming to an end soon. He and his wife just had a new daughter, their first child, and he was looking for the right time to make the announcement. He wanted to spend more time with his family. Coach Crouse had been involved with coaching wrestling for 15 years, and the time seemed right to make the announcement, so at the end of 2003 season the announcement was made. He was retiring from coaching. Coach Crouse didn’t want the program to go down hill after his departure, so he had been grooming the middle school coach, Jimmy Rutherford. In fact, Coach Rutherford had taken over the middle school job in 1997. He had done an outstanding job getting the young wrestlers ready for Coach Crouse to enter into the high school wrestling ranks. During the summer of 2003, there was a big out-pouring from the community for the high school to hire Coach Rutherford, as the next head coach. In fact, the community packed the school board’s meeting room -- standing room only with the crowd spilling out into the hallways -- in support of Coach Rutherford. The decision was made. Coach Rutherford would be the fifth head coach in Alleghany’s history. It took Coach Rutherford a couple of years to get the program back to it championship ways, but in 2006 Coach Rutherford’s team won the state dual championship and followed up the very next year with another state dual title, and again in 2008. After forty years, the wrestling program at Alleghany has produce 14 individual state champions, 53 state placers and 158 wrestlers who qualified for the state tournament. |
