Stacks continuing wrestling career with Brewton-Parker

Published 6:28 pm Monday, June 19, 2017

VALDOSTA — Savannah Stacks has dealt with her fair share of adversity in wrestling.

She had to overcome attitudes toward women in the sport. She overcame a concussion at a tournament in Dallas last year. She dislocated her elbow earlier this year and thought her dream of wrestling collegiately might have crumbled.

Stacks blasted through adversity again to not only rehab herself, but rehab her dream. By the time she signed with the Brewton-Parker Barons on Sunday, she was being actively recruited by four different colleges.

“I’m very lucky because I’d been wrestling for three years and didn’t think I was good enough to (wrestle) for college, but I tried to work my way up there,” Stacks said. “And it was a few short years ago I had this dream, and now that I can achieve it and finish my education and all of that, I just love it.”

Stacks became the first female wrestler from Lowndes County to sign with a college. She wants her work ethic to continue inspiring other girls to pursue wrestling, and hopes there will one day be an all-girls wrestling team at her alma matter, Lowndes High School.

Stacks began her wrestling career at Lowndes as a sophomore. She had been studying Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and was interested in it when she came to Lowndes. The closest thing the school offered to the martial art was wrestling, so she gave it a shot.

She credits Lowndes assistant coach Matt Godwin with helping her achieve her most gratifying wrestling moment: her first victory.

“He wanted me to succeed, no matter what it took,” Stacks said. “So when I won my first match, I knew that I wouldn’t ever stop and I would keep pushing myself to be better.”

The more she learned about wrestling, the more she enjoyed it. She wrestled against both girls and boys in high school. Stacks said the greatest obstacle to navigate when it came to wrestling against boys was their often superior level of upper-body strength. She found that girls often had superior lower-body strength. Through training, she learned how to put certain moves together to give herself the best chance of winning no mater who she faced.

“She has a physical presence about her and a relentlessness about her,” said South Georgia Athletic Club coach Jason Griner. “Savannah won’t give up. She won’t give up on the mat, not in anything. Very headstrong when she sets her mind toward a goal and it shows on the mat.”

Griner has coached Stacks for two years as a member of his Devil Dogs wrestling team. He watched her compete at the women’s nationals in Dallas in May. The first person Stacks drew was the reigning world champion.

“(Stacks) went out there and threw everything at her, but there was only so much she could, because the vast knowledge and experience this girl had on her,” Griner said.

“She doesn’t wrestle fearing losing. I see a lot of wrestlers that will wrestle like they’re afraid to lose. That’s not Savannah.”

Joining the Devil Dogs was a turning point in Stacks’ career on the mat.

“I traveled all around the state of Georgia and the U.S., and went on the national team,” she said. “We went All-American as a girls dual team and I just kept pushing, going to camps and never stopped wrestling.”

Stacks returned a couple of months after suffering a concussion last year and became a pivotal part of the first women’s All-American team Georgia had ever produced. It was her technical fall against Team New York that put the Georgia women’s team into an All-American rank.

The last major threat to Stacks’ wrestling future came in the form of a dislocated elbow earlier this year. She was performing well in folkstyle when the injury occurred, endangering the rest of her season. But, just as she’d done many times before, Stacks pushed through adversity. She came back to folkstyle and garnered a lot of attention from colleges.

“It’s pretty awesome to see her develop and become the wrestler she’s become,” Griner said. “She’s always been a wonderful young lady and you couldn’t ask for a better person on the team. But just seeing her mental toughness as well as her physical toughness through all of this has been such an incredible and rewarding experience.”