STARKVILLE — Only one U.S. state is without a sanctioned high school wrestling program: Mississippi.
Folkstyle wrestling, once a Mississippi High School Activities Association sport in the 1970s, has been nonexistent in the Magnolia State since that point.
However, the sport has returned thanks to the support of a select few and high schools across the state have latched on, including one of the newest high schools to say yes: Starkville High.
The Yellow Jackets, under the leadership of Donald Buckner and assistant coach AJ Vega, began their first season as a wrestling program this fall. The foundation for what they hope will be a longstanding program at Starkville is already being laid.
“It started about 40 years ago,” Buckner said. “My high school football coach told me that if I wasn’t playing basketball, I was on the wrestling team. Fast forward to now, I find out Starkville is starting a program. Another coach heard they were looking for a coach, so he threw my name in the hat.”
“… It really helped me as a person and as an athlete, so I was excited when I found out Starkville was finally getting a program.”
He and Vega both wrestled young, but in coming from or returning to Mississippi, the absence of the sport caused them to fall out of touch with it.
When the opportunity came knocking to bring a team to Starkville, for Buckner, the decision to become part of it was a no-brainer.
He had wanted to coach the sport in some way, and it was the perfect situation to do just that.
“When I got my degree years ago, I wanted to get into teaching and coaching,” Buckner said. “One reason why I got a degree in that is because I had good coaches in high school that were good mentors for me…I had never dreamed, moving back to Mississippi, that I would ever be able to coach wrestling.”
Vega, a former international champion while growing up in Germany, also joined in on the ground floor, growing the sport throughout Mississippi.
Alongside Brian Fox, president of the Mississippi Wrestling Foundation, he became an instructor at Spartan Wrestling Club in Tupelo — Mississippi’s first wrestling club.
Once back on the mat, the moves, motions and strategies of the sport returned like old friends, even after decades of consistent participation.
“It was like riding a bike, actually,” Vega said. “A lot of it stays with you because wrestling is muscle memory. Once you learn your basics, it’s like riding a bike. It’s something that you just don’t lose.”
He was alerted to an opening at Starkville through Fox and after applying, Vega became Buckner’s assistant with the Yellow Jackets, a perfect location for the longtime Columbus resident.
The job itself, coaching high school wrestling, has been full of teaching moments and learning curves, but the venture itself has been exciting.
Fox, the mastermind of bringing the sport to Mississippi, is an accomplished wrestler in his own right, wrestling at Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio.
He grew up in the heart of wrestling in America, the Buckeye State, home to several of the most accomplished collegiate programs in the history of the sport — including Ohio State, the alma mater of 2016 Olympic gold medalist Kyle Snyder and the 2015 national champion.
Growing up, wrestling was all Fox knew, and that passion for the sport is what he wanted to bring to the South.
“I wanted to get wrestling going,” he said. “I knew it was going to take a lot of people, a lot of resources. I got on the radio, Facebook ads, social media, the local news, just trying to get awareness down here. That brought a lot of former wrestlers living in Mississippi into our network.”
This included at the college ranks, where there might not be any NCAA-sponsored wrestling programs in Mississippi, but there’s significant growing interest.
Up Highway 12 at Mississippi State, the MSU Wrestling Club was founded earlier this year by Brody Knapp, but soon after, Noah Roux took over, helping organize practices and garner interest.
Roux, a New Orleans native who placed in the state tournament in high school, was integral in Starkville’s growth, having helped out at practices early on before his graduation in December.
“When I was coming up in wrestling, my coaches, they were great role models for me,” Roux said. “It’s really cool for me to be that guy for these high schoolers coming up in wrestling.”
Roux might be leaving Starkville, but as he and others in the club went to help at practices, he hopes that others will follow in his example, helping out at practice to further build the foundation.
With the season fully underway, Starkville has gotten great experience participating in duals and tournaments, but the fun is just beginning for the Yellow Jackets and the state of Mississippi.
Nineteen high schools across the state have signed on to have wrestling programs so far.
That number will only continue to skyrocket.
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