Dominant Junior state title run spurs on Highlands wrestler White

Brayden White felt motivated to win a Pennsylvania Junior Wrestling championship after losing in the finals last year. But he especially wanted to do it in the same weight class, cutting down to compete in the 95-pound bracket at the tournament last month.

The Highlands seventh-grader made sure his efforts were rewarded, putting on a dominant performance to win a PJW 12-and-under championship last month at Petersen Events Center and becoming the first Highlands wrestler to win a junior state title.

“It’s a good accomplishment,” White, 13, said. “I feel like it’s good so the kids behind me have something to look up to.”

A state champion two years ago when he wrestled for Burrell, White lost by a single point in the 95-pound finals last spring.

Given the shot at redemption, he left little to chance. He pinned his first two opponents in 35 and 36 seconds, scored a 10-1 major decision in the semifinals and got another pin in the finals, taking down Eli Carr of District 3 Hempfield in 1 minute, 46 seconds.

“I just wanted to go in and get the match over with so people couldn’t watch film or try to stop my moves,” White said. “I was just dominant. I was going out there with a good mindset and staying on them.”

That’s the way White tends to wrestle in general. The son of former Burrell wrestler Brock White — a former PIAA third-place finisher — he began wrestling when he was just 4 years old.

“Brayden was just one of those kids where his brother wrestled, and he was just running around the mat,” said Brock White, who wrestled on Burrell’s first WPIAL championship team in 1997. “He was always around it. He was running around, doing this and that, and whenever we’d get a real small kid in the room, no matter what the age was, we were just like, ‘Brayden, it’s time to wrestle.’ ”

These days Brayden practices with the Highlands varsity team, where his older brother, also named Brock, is a freshman competitor.

Most days White works out with freshman Jrake Burford, who earned All-American honors last summer at the U.S. Marine Corps Greco-Roman Junior Nationals.

“I like it because I get beat up, and then I go on Saturday or Sunday, whenever the tournament is, and beat up on the other kids,” said White, who also wrestles at the Mat Factory under coach Jordan Shields, a former Burrell PIAA state champion.

Highlands coach Grant Walters said White “completely dominated the whole tournament” en route to winning the state junior championship, par for the course for the young wrestler.

“He’s always amped up, he’s always ready to go,” Walters said. “There’s never an off switch. When he steps on the mat, it’s on.”

This year the preparation began with cutting weight to get down to 95.

“I think I cut like eight pounds throughout the week,” White said. “I took Epsom salt baths, and I was maintaining my weight and eating right.”

He said this championship felt more meaningful to him than his one in 2017 considering the finals loss last year. He also placed third in the tournament in 2015 and second in 2016.

The title also is monumental for Highlands — or, in Walters’ words, “astronomical.” The school doesn’t have a junior high wrestling program, so Walters brings in wrestlers of that age to his varsity practices to work out with the high school team.

Walters said six Highlands wrestlers have placed in the state junior tournament in recent years, with White becoming the first tournament champion. He hopes the run of success will spark interest in creating an official junior high program to link the elementary and varsity programs.

“That’s the complete enticement,” Walters said. “With the success we had in the varsity program this year, making the playoffs and everything like that, to the kids seeing that and wanting to wrestle, if you’re a smart person in the sport and you want to get better, you want to wrestle with the best. And right now, he’s the best in our state. Hopefully, that draws more attention to us as a whole and our seventh- (and) eighth-grade community to get more kids out.”

White is looking to continue to compete this summer and already has his sights set on a junior high state championship next season.

“I just like the aggressiveness, the hard work and what you get out of the hard work,” he said.