VALDOSTA — Valdosta High’s wrestling team didn’t just have a good season. They had their best ever.

Valdosta finished sixth at the state wrestling meet last Saturday in Duluth. The No. 6 finish is the best finish ever for the Wildcats, one place better than the seventh-place 1998 squad.

“I’m proud of the guys, and all they did this year,” Valdosta head coach Benjy Scarbor said. “Sixth in the state is the best Valdosta has ever done in wrestling.”

The top 10 in the state wrestling ranks has long been considered the exclusive domain of the metro Atlanta schools, ground rarely treaded on by the wrestling programs of South Georgia.

But Scarbor has long yearned to build a program that would be competitive with the big boys up north. The past three years, the Wildcats have been more and more competitive with the state’s best. In 2004, Jamal Scott won the school’s second-ever state championship, then in 2005, Scott repeated as a state champion, and Paul Bess was also a state champion.

This year, Valdosta did not have any state champs, but for the first time ever, they had three wrestlers place in the top six. Bess, Marcus Morrison and Tavaris Sharp each placed third in their respective weight classes.

“We had three guys place third. We’ve never had that many wrestlers finish that high,” Scarbor said. “I’m very proud of Paul, Marcus and Tavaris. They’ve all had great careers here, and they were competitive in all of their matches at state. I know they were a little disappointed they didn’t win state, but all three of them got knocked out of the semifinals by the eventual state champion.”

Bess became just the second Valdosta wrestler to place at state three times (Scott placed four times). He was the 171-pound state champ as a junior, and finished sixth as a sophomore. He went 38-3 his senior season at 160 pounds.

“Paul has had a great career here,” Scarbor said. “He’s got some smaller colleges interested in him, so he could have a chance to continue wrestling at the state level.”

Morrison has occupied Valdosta’s lineup in the 112-pound slot the past four years, and has had an outstanding career. He was a three-time region champion, like Bess and Sharp. He also placed at state for the second time, having been fifth as a sophomore in 2004.

“On the bus home, Marcus told me he had no regrets about this season,” Scarbor said. “I think most of these guys have no regrets about how they ended up at state.”

Sharp placed at state for the first time, at 130 pounds, and he will try to improve on his third place finish next season. The junior will return to Valdosta next winter, where he will try to become only the second four-time region champion (after Scott).

While Bess, Morrison and Sharp earned the most points for the Wildcats at state, it took the efforts of the whole team to earn the 91 points that earned Valdosta its sixth-place finish. Of the 12 wrestlers Valdosta took to the state meet, 11 won at least one match. Each win earns a team points (ranging from three points for a decision to six points for a pin).

“This was a total team effort,” Scarbor said. “Every match we won earned us points towards the final standings.”

The success of the Valdosta wrestling program has been the result of hard work in the wrestling room, and a willingness to face the best competition they could find. This season, Scarbor put together the toughest schedule he could, one that had the Wildcats traveling to the Pope and Walton tournaments in Marietta, two of the best in Georgia, and the Suwannee Invitational in Live Oak, Fla. (which brings in teams from several different states). It wasn’t the easiest route, but it paid off in the end.

“Going up to the Pope tournament and the Walton tournament, and then down to the Suwannee tournament, we faced some tough competition. But we did that so we could wrestle the best teams, because I felt it help us get better,” Scarbor said. “We wrestled (No. 2) Collins Hill, (No. 3) McEachern and (No. 4) Walton, as well as a great team from Texas. It was hard on us at times, but it helped us get better, because we finished sixth.

“The way we finished the season, it makes you feel like it was all worth it. All the hard work these guys put in, all the tough matches they wrestled, all those long trips on the weekend to those tournaments, it was all worth it.”