Mustangs on a Mission
Story by Tom Gillispie
The most successful sports team in Forsyth County doesn’t play on a field, or a court, or a diamond. Instead, they dominate the wrestling mat. Meet the Parkland High School wrestling team.
Every year at the North Carolina state wrestling tournament, there’s a common theme running through the coaches, wrestlers, and fans.
Beware the Mustangs.
Led by Coach Maurice Atwood, the Parkland High School Mustangs had won a remarkable 286 straight dual matches entering the 2012 Christmas tournament season. (Dual matches are head-to-head matches with other schools). If you’re looking for a dynasty in local high-school athletics, this is it.
From the 2006–07 season to the 2010–11 season, the Mustangs finished undefeated in dual meets and won three 3-A state dual titles, two 4-A state dual titles, and five straight state tournament championships. Then last season the Mustangs were 50-0 in dual matches and won the 4-A state dual title. But the team failed to win its sixth straight title at the state tournament, finishing third behind Pinecrest and Southern Alamance.
Were the Mustangs unhappy about the third place finish? Sure. They expected to win. "It’s hard to be disappointed in finishing third, but we were," Atwood says. "Disappointed" is a huge understatement in this case. Try devastated. "We had the best team. [The point standings] shouldn’t have been that close, but it was."
Atwood, who’s coached Parkland’s team since May 2004, attributes part of the Mustangs’ success to the fact that he’s single and has more time to put into coaching than the average coach. Meanwhile, many of the wrestlers say that high expectations fuel the team’s success.
"There’s definitely a lot of pressure here; we’ve got to keep our expectations high," says Drew Turner, a two-time state champion whose career record was a sparkling 118-8 when we went to press. Turner won his first championship at 103 pounds as a freshman and his second at 113 pounds as a sophomore. When asked about Atwood, Turner says "he can be a very difficult coach sometimes, but he has great motivating speeches to keep us going."
When Atwood sees one of his wrestlers get slack or in a bind, he pulls out the ultimate trump card. He asks the student whether he wants to wrestle on the Parkland team that loses the dual-match winning streak. Usually, that lights a fire under all of his wrestlers. After all, Parkland’s 286 straight victories is the longest current winning streak in the nation.
Interestingly, though, Atwood seems less interested in the dual-match streak than what the program has done for the wrestlers he calls "socially disadvantaged."
"They don’t have anything to do but wrestle, and I don’t have anything to do but talk them into buying into the program," he says. "They love wrestling.
"I have several guys in college now who never had dreamed of going to college."
It isn’t easy to maintain near perfection, though. Atwood notes that other Forsyth County wrestling programs have had success, notably West Forsyth. But he adds that all Forsyth County schools have one major disadvantage: While surrounding counties have middle-school wrestling, Forsyth does not. That means that most of Atwood’s wrestlers have no experience when they enter the program. Despite this, Atwood and the Mustangs march on.
When asked whether he would call his program a dynasty, Atwood responds humbly. "I don’t think about that stuff, to be honest with you. Everywhere we go, we try to achieve as much as possible."
Atwood has interesting ties with the Mustangs; he isn’t even the first Atwood to be a successful coach at Parkland. His brother, Greg, coached the Mustangs for five years in the 1990s, leading the school to two state championships. Maurice graduated from Reynolds (class of ’87); Greg was a Parkland graduate.
Greg, who spent the past two years as an assistant wrestling coach at West Forsyth, became North Forsyth’s wrestling coach this year. He says he often marvels at Parkland’s results under his little brother.
"His championships speak for themselves," he says. "I did a good job as Parkland’s coach, and he’s taken it to another level. I was a little surprised they didn’t [win the team title] last year, but it happens. It could happen to anybody. If anybody was due for a bad tournament, it was them, but it was still close.
"And now they’re motivated to get back to where they were. It could be a blessing in disguise."
Maurice Atwood, meanwhile, says he realizes the Parkland streak will end sometime; he just wants to delay the inevitable.
"The bottom line is you can’t win all of them, but that doesn’t mean we won’t try like hell."
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