Brother, sister grappling duo tough on the mat

For HCHS Freshman Sawyer Hudson and his sister, HCMS 7th grader, Georgia Hudson, the love for wrestling is a family thing. The duo are both Harlan wrestlers, with Georgia calling Sawyer her inspiration.

With Sawyer being a few years ahead of her, Georgia has found him to be her biggest influence, along with some professional figures.

“My brother, and other are big inspirations in the sport like Spencer Lee and Bo Bassett,” she said.

Georgia says she likes wrestling because she gets to do it with friends.

“You get to be very comfortable with the people because you’re in contact each other and throwing each other, and it builds better relationships,” she said.

Sawyer and Georgia’s father, Matt, enjoys watching them compete, but finds it to be a bit nerve racking.

“You get this feeling in your gut where you’re just nervous and pumped up at the same time because you know how good they are,” he said.    

With Sawyer and Georgia just being involved in wrestling, their mother, Erin, talked about juggling her life along with their lives.

“It’s not that hard,” she said. “They primarily just wrestle, go to school, and have practices. This season has been pretty crazy with both of them wrestling, but we keep the balance pretty good, and they’re great students.”

Sawyer said before each match, he prepares by “chilling out.”

“I don’t really think too much about it, and just go wrestle,” Sawyer said.

To this point in the season, both Sawyer and Georgia have had tough opponents they’ve faced off against on the mat.

“My toughest opponent was probably this girl from Glenwood,” she said. “She was pretty hard and she has like five years of experience on me. She’s been to state. I wrestle a lot of state people, and they’ve all been pretty hard.”

With Georgia being in middle school, her season is winding down, but she plans to continue to work on improving.

“I finish my season next week, but hopefully I’m going to practice with the high school girls, and learn a lot from them,” she said. “I’m hopefully going to do a lot more meets outside of just school wrestling.”

With a vast majority of their school careers in front of them, Sawyer and Georgia hope to grow in the next three seasons.

“I just see myself getting a little better at wrestling,” he said.