CHESAPEAKE, VA (WTKR)- With time winding down in the Class 5 state wrestling championships in the 175 lbs. bout, Sam Diggs found himself in a one point hole.
With five seconds left, however, the Deep Creek senior's last move would be the winning one. He used a maneuver called a lat drop to flip his opponent, pick up two points and win as time expired.
"It was very surreal," Diggs remembered. "Honestly, sometimes I still can't believe it now, but I trust my preparation that it all led up to there, working hard, blood, sweat and tears in this room, other rooms. All around, wherever I went added up to that moment."
What would add up are the years of hard work. Diggs initially got into wrestling as a way to stay in shape for football, but the sport won him over during his freshman year.
"I fell in love with it," he recalled. "My coach, he took us to a lot of different places. I was losing, but it was still fun and it was something that I wanted to make mine."
The losing more than winning caused the Hornet grappler to doubt himself a bit, but he did not walk away. With the help of what he calls his "village," Diggs stayed the course and powered through.
"I stuck with it," he said. "I started to love it, I started to study it, became not just a wrestler, but a student of wrestling. I learned a lot from it."
"That's what helped to his success was his preparation," added Deep Creek head coach Travis Ferguson. "When that switch came on, it stayed on and I wouldn't bet against Sam Diggs."
The senior's triumph made him the first individual Hornet state champion since 1992. Claiming state gold is something that enters many Deep Creek wrestlers' heads when they walk into the wrestling room. They see a wall of names looking back at them, the names of previous district, region and state title winners that have come through the program.
"I think one of the first questions he asked me was 'where's my name go on the wall?,'" Ferguson recalled. "This is what we tell our kids. You wrestle hard, you get on the wall. He'll run up that wall and touch that state title plaque all the time because that's what he wanted to do."
"The longer you look at it and the harder you work, the more it becomes achievable," Diggs said. "You start looking at regionals like, 'hey, I want to win the region.' After you win the region it's like 'I know I can do it now. I want to win the state.'"
Diggs has his eye on wrestling at the college level and is holding some Division I offers. No matter what the future holds in the sport, however, he'll tell you that wrestling has prepared him for life, as well.
"It's taught me that there's going to be dark times," he noted. "It's not always going to be sunny and if you keep persevering and you keep going, you never know when you're going to break through and good things are going to happen to you."
If you have a nominee for Student-Athlete of the Week, just send an email to marc.davis@wtkr.com.
