Polk County received the sixth seed in the 1A West dual team wrestling tournament and will face Hayesville on Saturday in the opening round of the state playoffs.
The Wolverines will travel to Avery for that opening match. The Vikings, as the No. 3 seed, will host a four-team pod that includes Polk, Hayesville and Swain, whom Avery will face in its opener. The winners of the two opening matches will then meet in the second round.
An earlier draft of the brackets had N.C. Leadership in the West field instead of the East. Moving N.C. Leadership changed all of the original seeding.
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Though Polk County finished as the second-ranked team in RPI in the 1A West bracket, the Wolverines were not seeded as a conference champion. That’s because the North Carolina High School Athletic Association has a different set of seeding standards for dual team wrestling than other sports when it comes to schools that are the only team in its classification in a conference.
For all other team sports, as the only 1A team in a split conference, a Polk County team can be seeded as a conference champion with either a winning record or a top-two conference finish. But in dual team wrestling, Polk can only be seeded as a conference champion by winning the Mountain Foothills 7 Conference. Though that stipulation is not listed in the NCHSAA handbook, Association officials did provide that guidance when Polk was first reclassified to 1A in 2023, and the Wolverines were seeded accordingly last season as well.
Hayesville finished the season with an 18-7 record. The Yellow Jackets received the 11th seed in the 1A West field.
The complete 1A West bracket, with host schools noted:
1 Mount Airy (host)
16 Thomas Jefferson
8 East Wilkes
9 Mitchell
5 Cherryville
12 Draughn
13 South Stokes
4 Bradford Prep (host)
3 Avery County (host)
14 Swain
6 Polk County
11 Hayesville
7 Alleghany
10 Starmount
2 Robbinsville (host)
15 Rosman
