SULTAN — Tucked away in the 38-foot by 46-foot mat-walled practice room at Sultan High School lies one of the best-kept secrets in Washington prep wrestling.
Forcing the Turks to toil nearly shoulder-to-shoulder in the bowels of an out-of-the-way high school, the practice room, a long way from comfortable even by wrestling room standards, is home to one of the best teams in the region.
Led by sixth-year head coach Garth MacDicken, the Turks — whose 39-person roster accounts for just under 10 percent of Sultan’s 428 students — has not lost a dual meet in three seasons, and that includes wins over Class 4A opponents Monroe, Jackson, Cascade and Mariner this season alone. The Turks have not finished lower than third in any of the weekend tournaments they have attended, events which included plenty of Class 2A, 3A and 4A programs.
The Turks are the state’s second-ranked Class 1A team, according to WashingtonWrestlingReport.net, and Sultan’s lineup boasts 11 ranked wrestlers, including James Mackenzie and Jamell Carroll, who spent most of the season as the top-ranked competitors at 132 and 138 pounds, respectively.
Mackenzie, a senior, and Carroll, a sophomore, have both dropped a weight class for the postseason, putting Mackenzie at 126 pounds and Carroll at 132.
Having that many talented wrestlers gives rise to intense intrasquad competition that MacDicken believes is a main reason for Sultan’s success, which continued last weekend as the Turks won the District 1 sub-regional tournament at Mount Baker in utterly dominating fashion.
The Turks captured championships in 10 of the 14 weight classes, and 22 of the 23 Sultan wrestlers in the field qualified for Saturday’s regional tournament at Meridian, with the 23rd going as an alternate.
The regional field will include the same teams from sub-regionals, along with Vashon Island, Bellevue Christian, Cascade Christian, Port Townsend, Khlahowya and Chimacum.
“The level of competition in the room every day has been very high,” MacDicken said. “It’s incredible how hard it is in practice every day when all the kids are competing against some of the best kids in the state.”
MacDicken and varsity assistant David Belcher have sought out the best competition for the Turks’ tournament schedule that the program’s modest budget can accommodate, and the team has rewarded that effort with success.
Sultan won the River Ridge Rumble on Jan. 17 that featured Lincoln, A.C. Davis, Puyallup and Renton, and finished second behind Rogers of Puyallup at the Wilfong Classic, ahead of Puyallup, Marysville Pilchuck, Spanaway Lake and Orting, Class 2A’s top-ranked team.
“Coach plans the hardest tournaments he can for us because he wants us to work,” senior 182-pounder Matt Baller said. “We want to face hard competition because that’s what we’re going to see at state. We want to be acclimated to it before we’re there, so it’s not as much of a shock when we get to the Tacoma Dome.”
And make no mistake: This is a team that, as a result of its success against bigger schools during the regular season, has begun to realize its own potential.
“I knew we were going to have a strong team, but going to Puyallup and those places and beating bigger schools gave our whole program confidence that we can accomplish a lot of good things,” said Mackenzie, who is 31-2 entering regionals. “I expect us to be in the top two or three at state.”
The depth of the lineup, with talented wrestlers throughout, is ideal for racking up team points in the postseason to help Sultan accomplish their team goal, provided everybody performs. No Sultan team has ever finished in the top five at Mat Classic.
Aside from the team goals, Mackenzie and Carroll, who enters regionals with a perfect 25-0 record, are favorites to bring home an individual state championship. That would also be a first for the Turks, who had state finalists in the early 2000s and mid-1990s, but never a champion.
Carroll, who moved to Sultan from Everett before his freshman year, is an athletic specimen with a strong handshake, a grip suggesting that once that hand gets hold of an opponent’s ankle or wrist, it is secure.
He is the leader of a talented sophomore class that aims to make sure that Sultan’s string of success extends a few more years into the future.
“Jamell is one of those rare wrestlers that come along. He’s very strong for his weight class and puts in a lot of work here and at home,” MacDicken said. “He’s always smiling, but he’s relentless on the mat. He’s had a lot of success as a youth wrestler, and we’re very happy to have him on the roster.”
Last season, Mackenzie and Carroll were in the same 126-pound weight class, and as a freshman, Carroll beat Mackenzie for the district and regional championships.
They also met up in the consolation rounds at Mat Classic, with Carroll again coming out on top in a 5-2 decision. He went on to finish fifth, with Mackenzie placing seventh.
When asked about his battles with Carroll in the wrestling room, Mackenzie smiles wide.
“We know that we’re teammates, but when we wrestle it’s serious,” he said. “We can’t get mad at each other. It’s just us in the room. When we’re out of the room we’re all friends.”
“It’s intense,” Carroll adds. “We’re not going to take it easy on each other. We pretend it’s like the finals of a tournament and we wrestle hard.”
When Mackenzie was an eighth-grader in 2011, he was one of the Sultan Middle School wrestlers who practiced in the high school wrestling room before the varsity took over the space. His older brother, D.J., wrestled for MacDicken, and he got to work out with the varsity every now and then.
Now as a team captain, Mackenzie shouts encouragement to the youngsters before the varsity practice begins. Like Baller and the other four seniors, he is very cognizant of what his classmates have helped build at Sultan.
“That’s very important to me,” he said. “When I graduate, I want to come back and see Sultan in the newspaper, saying that we sent 13 kids to state or something like that. It would be a good feeling to know that we were a part of that. We built it. To leave it as a championship team would be great.”
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