Cobb County Wrestling History and Heritage

Dear Friends of KSU Wrestling,

Let me begin by saying how honored I am to be a part of this program. I am extremely excited about the future of this program. However, I recognize that this program would not be possible without the richness of the wrestling heritage in Cobb county. I hope that I and this program can be an integral part in expanding the unequalled excellence and pride of this area at a collegiate level.

I would like to invite you to join me as I walk down the historic road of this great wrestling community. If someone could select the perfect area in the United States to start a college wrestling program, the educated selection would be Georgia’s Cobb county area. For forty years, Cobb county has been a hot spot for scholastic wrestling in the South.

In the 1970’s, the area was very fortunate to be blessed with Frank Keller. Keller, then future hall of famer, came here from the University of Georgia where he had served as the Head wrestling coach. Keller not only trained wrestlers, but also the local football coaches that were saddled with the challenge to coach wrestling. It was very common to see as many coaches as wrestlers at Keller’s Sprayberry wrestling practices.

In the late 1970’s a young soon to be coach from a small university in Indiana, Gordon Pritz, showed up at Campbell High School and was hired by long time Cobb county coach, Keith Gossett, to coach his Junior Varsity program. Little did Coach Gossett know, young Gordon would go on to collect eight varsity state titles with one at Wheeler and seven straight at McEachern.

With the sport growing so quickly in prestige and interest, it became imperative that feeder programs supply the area high schools with kids that had benefited from early coaching and technical advancement. Rollie Lambert of the McEachern area was the first super star that comes to mind when looking at the various successful feeder programs. His kids won so many metals at various tournaments in those early years, that trying to count them would be impossible.

Not only coaching, but leadership and organization were vital to the growth of the sport in the area. Mary Vasquez along with Bill Hess and the work that they did with the Wheeler Wildcat Open in the early 1980’s made that particular tournament as large and prestigious as the USA Kids’ State Tournament is today. In more recent times, Paula McGahee, with her southern drawl and hospitality put Team Georgia on the national stage. Let us not forget the Marietta Daily Journal and her sister newspapers for their outstanding coverage of the sport and its athletes.

The next step that enabled Cobb to stay at the top was the influx of quality wrestling coaches that were beginning to sign contracts with the Cobb county school system. Steve Day signed with Lassiter and was notably recognized as one of the top scholastic heavy weight coaches in the nation. Steve Lattazorie at Wheeler, Brian Hague at Harrison, and Tony Van Horn of McEachern are other notable Cobb county coaches that are known across the country. Near by Cherokee county had Bob Eddy and Kevin Higgins. Hague, Lambert, and Pritz alone were responsible for the first three perennial four-time state champions, Scott Hague, Shawn Hague, and Todd Lambert. These coaches paved an illustrious and proud path in Georgia wrestling; all are future Hall of Famers. Fortunately, the list does not stop here, there are many other quality coaches, as well, that have made this area so strong. In the last twenty eight years, with just the names mentioned above, this area is responsible for eighteen team state titles and hundreds of individual placers.

I challenge wrestling fans from the past, present, and future to jump aboard the Kennesaw State wrestling band-wagon.

Sincerely,

Alex Tucker
30 year Cobb county wrestling fan