The best wrestled tournament by a North Carolinian all weekend. Brown opened by teching Alabama champion Thomas Patterson and majoring Florida 2A champion Vladimir Drown. Then he beat #6 seed Daniel Brown of Indiana, #25 nationally (SI), 11-4, #13 Izaya Schickley of Pennsylvania, and on Sunday morning #14 Paden Alyea, the Virginia 3A champion. Three top-15 seeds in one weekend. His run ended in the blood round against #21 Liam McGettigan of Florida, #26 nationally (SI), who went on to finish 6th. One win from a medal, with the strongest set of wins of any North Carolinian.
RecruitWrestlers · Super 32 · Greensboro
North Carolina Boys Recap
Super 32 2026
Photo: Rhett Hoy
113
NC boys in the brackets
11
wins over top-15 seeds
15
winning records
1
All-American
Super 32 is the best yardstick we have. Once a year the country's best high school wrestlers come to one tournament in Greensboro, and we get to see where North Carolina stands. Not only against every state in the country, but against ourselves: the North Carolina of a year ago, and the year before that.
By that measure, this was an encouraging weekend. Three years ago, NC boys beat two top-15 seeds all tournament. Last year it was six. This year it was eleven, and the wins came from more wrestlers each year: five, then seven, then eight. None of those steps is a giant leap on its own. Together they look like a trend, and small gains that keep stacking up are how a state's wrestling changes.
The weekend had its leaders. Braylen Yates (East Rowan, 175) earned North Carolina's lone boys All-American medal. Mason Brown beat three top-15 seeds. Ellis Chia, a senior with less than two years in the sport, beat two at heavyweight. Brown and Chia each came within one win of the podium.
Not every number moved. Four NC boys were still alive on Sunday morning, the same as last year and half of 2024's eight, and no NC boy beat a wrestler who finished on the podium. Sixty of our 113 boys, 53%, went 0-2, about the same share as the last two years (51% in 2024 and 2025). Winning the first match is the next step for the middle of the lineup, and beating a medalist is the next step at the top. The three-year comparison below shows where we've grown and where we haven't yet.
The girls' tournament, headlined by Lauren Samuel (132) and Ella Taylor (200), both 3rd-place finishers, is covered in its own recap.
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Three years of progress
Wins over top-15 seeds
+5 vs 20252
20246
202511
2026Wrestlers in brackets
105
202490
2025113
2026+23 vs 2025
How the grades work
Performance grades for this tournament, not rankings of the wrestlers. Each grade has one rule; a wrestler gets the highest one he meets.
A+Top-four finish on the podium · reserved, none this year
ABeat two or more top-15 seeds, reached the blood round or better · 3
A-Beat a seeded wrestler · 4
B+Beat a nationally ranked wrestler, or won five with every loss to a seed · 2
BWinning record with a win over a state champion or placer · 7
B-2-2 with a win over a state champion or runner-up · 8
The full method
These are performance grades for one weekend, not rankings of who is the better wrestler. A grade measures what a wrestler did in Greensboro: who he beat, how far he went and who beat him. A win over a national seed carries the most weight, because most NC boys were unseeded and every seed they beat was a result the bracket didn't expect. That's why the top grade doesn't require a medal: Mason Brown and Ellis Chia, both unseeded, beat five top-15 seeds between them and each reached the blood round, one win from the podium, and Braylen Yates, the #20 seed, beat three and medaled.
Each grade has one rule, printed beside it above, and a wrestler gets the highest grade whose rule he meets. An A+ takes a top-four finish on the podium; no North Carolina boy reached it this year.
Only contested bouts count toward a grade's wins over seeds; a forfeit counts in the record, never in the grade. Every grade above follows its rule; none was set by hand. Within each grade, wrestlers are not listed in rank order. Wrestlers below that line are named in Honorable Mention or in The Rest of North Carolina, and the full grading for every wrestler is in the accompanying data file.
A
Grade A
Beat two or more top-15 seeds, reached the blood round or better
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Graded below
Graded below
Graded below
Graded below
Honorable mention
The Rest of North Carolina
Sixty-seven more North Carolina boys stepped on the mat in Greensboro, and every one of them chose the hardest test in high school wrestling. Their full results are in the accompanying data file.
The Bigger Picture: Raising the Bar
Super 32 is one of the toughest tests in high school wrestling, and a chance to measure North Carolina against the best competition in the country. This year's results give us reasons to be encouraged.
Mason Brown, Braylen Yates and Ellis Chia showed that North Carolina wrestlers can beat nationally recognized talent, and Chia did it with less than two years in the sport.
The results also show how much work remains. We produced one boys All-American, and no NC boy beat a wrestler who finished on the podium.
That's the standard we're chasing.
At RecruitWrestlers, our mission is to measure every state's wrestlers against the best in the country, with verified results. Super 32 gave us another benchmark. Now the challenge is to build on it.
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