Cobb Cherokee In The Game High School Sports Magazine

Will Moss looks like an inviting target to an unsuspecting bully. He stands at 4’8” and weighs all of 75 pounds - certainly not the physique of an aspiring Olympian. If you decide to take Moss’s lunch money, you better get ready for a long, painful ordeal. There’s not a 13-year-old in the state tougher than Moss. He is a three-time Georgia triple-crown winner (state champion in folk style, freestyle and Greco in the same year), has won 13 individual state titles, a three-time USA Wresting folk style All American, the 2010 Most Outstanding Wrestler in the Georgia state championships, a USA Wrestling national runner-up and winner of 16 national tournaments. He has also won two Dominator Awards, a national tournament points series. Moss is not to be trifled with.

Moss has been wrestling for nine years. His wrestling career began in the most unlikely of places - under the influence of World Wrestling Entertainment. Moss had a few WWE action figures he enjoyed playing with. As far as wrestling went, that was all he knew about the sport. When he was five years old, his father, Charlie, sat down with him and the two made a list of sports for him to try. Among the activities were boxing, ice hockey, wrestling and Cub Scouts. In Georgia, there wasn’t much of an opportunity to play hockey. No boxing gyms would allow a five-year-old in their programs. Wrestling showed promise.

Charlie Moss got in touch with Luke McSorley, now the wrestling coach at Hillgrove High School. He told McSorley about Will’s interest in the sport, and McSorley told Charlie to bring him in. At the time, John Queirov, now a professional mixed martial arts fighter, was wrestling for McSorley in high school. Queirov took Moss under his wing, and the two developed a strong bond that remains to this day. “I fell in love with wrestling from the beginning. I met some really great people. It was just fun,” says Will Moss.

When Will Moss walked into the gym for the first time, he thought he would see something similar to what he had watched in the WWE. Moss was pleasantly surprised when he realized that the wrestling he would be doing on the mat would not be what was piped into his living room each Monday night. “When I saw it wasn’t like the WWE, I was happy. I started to understand the sport a little more,” he recalls.

For the first few years, Moss learned the sport and competed regularly. He was getting better each time he stepped on the mat, but he wasn’t winning very much. Finally, around the time he turned eight years old, he started winning more matches. That is when he figured out he was pretty good, and wrestling opened up a whole new world for him. From the ages of nine to 11, Moss won regularly. As he started moving up in the rankings, the competition he faced got better and better. For the last two years, he has not won as many matches, but he has still performed very well on the national stage.

That world is pretty tough. The competition schedule and the practice regimen are grueling. Wrestling is a very demanding sport, one that requires year ‘round attention to detail, particularly at the level in which Moss competes. The rewards, though, are immeasurable. Moss has done things that few of his peers have done. He has wrestled on both coasts and just about everywhere in between. The people he has met have been amazing, and he’s learned a great deal about himself. Wrestling can be a lonely sport - you out there on the mat, squaring off alone against your opponent in front of crowds ranging from several dozen to several thousand. It is competition in its purest form: man against man, no teammates, no lifelines, no commercial breaks, one-on-one, may the best man win. You learn a lot about yourself on that mat. Can you fight back from a deficit? Can you win the matches you’re not supposed to? How do you outsmart a bigger and stronger opponent? How do you muster the strength and courage to push through and never give up, even when smart money says you don’t stand a chance? Those are the lessons Moss has learned, and his ability to answer each in the affirmative have forged him into one of the country’s best wrestlers.

For all the difficulty one must endure in the sport of wrestling, it’s not all pain and suffering. Moss has been through his fair share of lighthearted moments, none of which are funnier than the first state title he won. That year, he went to the meet expecting to face Cody Russell, a formidable wrestler from a higher weight class who was supposed to cut down to Moss’s class. On the way to the meet, Moss decided to try a flavor of Gatorade that he had never before tasted. The Gatorade made him sick. He threw up on the way to the meet and felt terrible the whole day. When he arrived at the gym, he curled up on the floor, wrapped in a blanket, dreading the moment he would have to get up and wrestle. He slept through the National Anthem, oblivious to everything going on around him. As it turned out, Russell didn’t show up, and neither did anyone else in Moss’s weight class. When he heard his name called, it was to accept his medal for winning first place. He didn’t have to wrestle a single match.

“I didn’t know what was going on. I was on the floor in a blanket covered with red Gatorade,” says Moss. That championship was the exception rather than the rule - none of the other titles he’s won have been that easy.

For Moss’s parents, keeping him from burning out is the top priority. Moss has to work hard and devote all his spare time to wrestling, but it also has to be fun. Once wrestling becomes a job, the passion for the sport will wane. “I try to make it as enjoyable as possible,” says Charlie Moss. “The competition is grueling on both the body and emotions. It’s very difficult. I try to be as positive as I can. When Will is out there, he’s giving it everything he can. He’s doing his best.”

Will Moss’s best has been good enough to attract the attention of Blair Academy in Blairsville, New Jersey, regarded by many as the top high school wrestling program in the country. Blair Academy has won 31 national wrestling championships, and Moss has submitted an application for admission. “I would love to get in there. It would be really big for me,” he says. Attending Blair Academy is part of Moss’s strategy to fulfill his long-term goal - wrestle in college for a year or two before making a run at the Olympics or world championships. Does Moss have what it takes or is he setting goals that are too aggressive? That’s one of those questions that can only be answered in time. Moss loves wrestling. He has extensive mat knowledge. The physical tools are there to be successful, as is the support system at home. If he stays healthy and his love of the sport never waivers, Marietta just might have an Olympic champion a few years down the road.

One thing Marietta won’t have is a WWE Superstar, at least not in the form of Moss. Many of the WWE’s talent wrestled at a high level in high school or college, and Cody Runnels (who wrestles as Cody Rhodes for the WWE’s Smackdown brand) is a former Georgia high school state champion. Moss’s love for wrestling might have started with those aforementioned WWE action figures, but he doesn’t see himself pursuing a career in the squared circle after his amateur career ends. “I’m not interested in that. I’d like to be a wrestling coach and give kids the same opportunities I’ve had,” he says.