Parallel unbeatens: Talon Seitz, Martin Duane named IP/BG Co-Wrestlers of the Year

When you’re beating everyone in your path, it opens a unique window into how people react to an inevitably bad end. Naturally, some take their lumps better than others — perhaps disarmingly so.

Opening round of the Class 3-A state championships in Anderson. Hilton Head Island’s Talon Seitz hardly breaks a sweat, pinning Carl Raines of Pickens in a blistering 11 seconds.

“The kid gets up and he’s just laughing. Shakes my hand and leaves,” Seitz recalled with a hint of bemusement. “I’m thinking, ‘Dude, this is states. You just lost.’ ”

Seahawks teammate Martin Duane has seen it, too — the sheepish grin, the breezy handshake, the opposing coach shrugging his shoulders. Sometimes, the best you can do is shrug it off.

In a season of perhaps unparalleled parallel dominance, unbeaten seniors Seitz and Duane are the All-Area Co-Wrestlers of the Year as selected by The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.

It’s the second straight co-honor for Seitz, who shared the designation a year ago with Beaufort’s Tom Murphy. This time, he’ll share with his close friend and practice partner — united at school this year when Seitz’s family moved across the bridge from Bluffton.

“It doesn’t get any better than when you’re going against the best,” Seitz said.

Said Duane: “It’s almost like having an overtime match in the (training) room, every single day.”

Both compiled 54-0 records this season, ending with Class 3-A individual titles. Seitz captured the crown at 170 pounds, giving him a second title to go with the one he won at Bluffton last year. Duane, twice a state runner-up, finally broke through to capture the 182 division.

Seitz dispatched 40 opponents by pin, with just seven foes taking him the full 6 minutes in a match. Duane tallied 35 pins and went the distance just 11 times.

They were the cornerstones of a Seahawks team that won the 3-A Lower State crown before falling to Eastside in the final. To decide between them would be splitting hairs.

“They were so focused. Both of them knew what they wanted to do,” said Seahawks coach Mike Newton, the IP/BG Coach of the Year.

The entire All-Area team is an elite group, featuring 12 wrestlers who won at least a Lower State title. Seven are state champions, with two others finishing runner-up. Five finished their seasons with three losses or fewer.

Those twin zeros, though, are unique.

For all its wrestling excellence, the last time Hilton Head produced an unbeaten was Alex Piper in 2003. Before that you have to back to Scott Moody and Joe Beck in the 1980s, shortly after the school opened. That’s three in 31 years — and now two in one season.

“It’s a great milestone,” Duane said. “It had been a while since anyone here had gone undefeated, and that includes guys that have won weight classes back-to-back-to-back.”

According to recent stats, about five wrestlers in South Carolina manage to complete the season unbeaten, across all classifications. The last undefeated season for any Beaufort County wrestler came in 2012, when Battery Creek’s David Ratliff went 45-0 at 285 pounds.

“The hard part of the whole thing,” Newton said, “was the pressure to win every single match.

“Our team expected them to win every single time. And not only to win, but to get a pin. It was almost unfair. In our prematch game plan, when we’d mention their names it was just, ‘Get the pin.’ ”

Though both Seahawks said going unbeaten wasn’t a goal to start the season, it began to come into focus after both finished on top at the Coastal Clash. That meet attracts top wrestlers from throughout the South, including several champions from other states.

“It’s the hardest competition we have,” Seitz said. “It’s like a national competition.”

For both wrestlers, the Coastal Clash produced their closest calls of the year. Seitz not only had to go the distance in the title match, but to double overtime before finally outlasting A.J. Alford of Fort Dorchester by a 4-3 score.

“I reversed him and it gave me a two-point lead,” he said. “Then he escaped (for one point) and I just held on. You’re dead tired, but I’ve gone way too far to give up now.”

Duane’s toughest test came in the semifinals, a 4-3 win over Domonique Hargrave of Camden County (Ga.), who later won Georgia’s Class 5-A crown.

“If I could go undefeated there,” he said, “I wasn’t going to allow myself to lose at all after that.”

Duane set a school record with 196 career wins, 12 more than the previous mark, and his 131 pins are the Seahawks’ all-time record. Seitz, meanwhile, holds the South Carolina careeer record with 168 pins. He set the single-season mark last year with 52 pins at Bluffton.

“The real joy is watching them in the practice room, when the lights aren’t on and there’s no medals to be won,” Newton said. “Just two guys going hard at each other to get better. Each of them are probably the best guys they’ve wrestled all year, and they got to do it five days a week.”

The question now is whether they’ll be able to continue together. Though Seitz has the higher recruiting profile — Nebraska and Iowa State have shown interest — he’s open to a smaller program if it means sticking with his partner.

“If I go to those universities, I don’t have my practice partner,” he said. “I wouldn’t have to build a new relationship with anybody when I have a relationship I can maybe hold through college.”

Campbell University, for one, is going after both wrestlers.

“Maybe we’ll wrestle together,” Duane said. “And if not, we’ll wrestle somewhere else and come back and roll with each other on the breaks. Have some fun.”

Whatever happens, nothing can take away this winter’s parallel journey.

This story was originally published March 12, 2016 at 5:34 PM with the headline "Parallel unbeatens: Talon Seitz, Martin Duane named IP/BG Co-Wrestlers of the Year."