Staff report

The Rowan County Wrestling Tournament will have a new look at Salisbury High on Saturday with the addition of Carson as a sixth school.

South, which has won the last five intra-county competitions, is always the program to beat. The Raiders won six straight county tournaments in the first half of the 1990s, so coach Wayne Freeman’s current crew will be striving to match that long string of dominance.

The original Rowan wrestling tournament in 1964 was a postseason affair conducted at Salisbury’s Boyden High on March 6-7 and was largely the creation of the late Jack Turney, Boyden’s head coach.

Boyden, which competed in 4A in those days, won the first county tournament with 116 points, producing five champions and five runners-up, but the Yellow Jackets still got a surprisingly strong push from West (87 points).

The format was different in 1964. The county event consisted of a tournament in each weight class, rather than the series of dual-team matches fans will be treated to tomorrow. Five of the 12 championship bouts in ’64 came down to West vs. Boyden confrontations.

East placed third in the inaugural event with 69 points. North was fourth (34) and South fifth (32). Boyden’s ‘B’ team managed seven points and finished sixth.

All five schools crowned at least one county champion.

Claiming individual titles were Boyden’s Bruce Rufty (98 pounds), East’s Bill Leazer (106), Boyden’s Richard Johnson (115), Boyden’s Don Weinhold (123), West’s Eddie Sloop (130), Boyden’s Jack Frost (136), East’s Dale Canup (141), East’s Danny Fisher (148), West’s Bill Smith (157), North’s Jerry Ellenberg (168), South’s Ronnie Gibson (183) and Boyden’s Jay Hardister (unlimited).

Times for Saturday’s matchups and a list of team champions since the 1987-88 school year are in Scoreboard.