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The great Christmas Eve Texas slap-down

[Editor’s note: We are assured this actually happened, that it is NOT a Texas Tall Tale, mainly because Texas came out on the losing end. But you are invited to scrutinize below what has become a brand-new local wrestling legend.]

Fayette County High School wrestler Drake McCoy (L) grapples with one of the few in-state wrestlers who dare to challenge him in his heavyweight class. McCoy is undefeated this year.
Photo/J. Frank Lynch.
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By J. FRANK LYNCH
jflynch@TheCitizenNews.com

Among followers of high school wrestling around the country, the name Drake McCoy is starting to take on something akin to cult status, or maybe hero worship.

Why else would a father and son fly all the way from Texas to Georgia two days before Christmas, uninvited and unannounced, for
the chance to go one-on-one with McCoy, the No. 1 ranked high school heavyweight in the nation?

The senior from Fayette County High established his reputation by going undefeated for more than two years, and winning several prestigious national tournaments in recent months.

He took the heavyweight title at “Beast of the East” in Delaware at Thanksgiving, manhandling top contenders from Northeastern states and earning still more name recognition.

He’s easily expected to repeat as the Georgia High School Association’s Class AAAAA individual state champion at heavyweight, which he first won last year.

But he’s not really focused on that. Instead, it is McCoy’s exposure beyond Georgia on the national club team circuit that has colleges like The Citadel and scouts from the U.S. Olympic Team trying to reach him day and night.

McCoy’s parents, Delayne and Chris Pritchett of Fayetteville, said they’ve gotten used to the frequent calls and letters. But on the morning of Dec. 23, the phone wouldn’t stop ringing.

When Delayne Pritchett answered, on the other end was an anxious Texan they’d never met who said he and his son were stuck at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport with nowhere to go.

The man tried to explain that the two had flown to Atlanta that morning to visit relatives somewhere down near Warner Robins, the Pritchetts recall.

But being from Texas, where everything is so close together, the man failed to realize how far a drive it would be in a rental car.

“He asked since they were so close to us, could his son meet Drake,” said Delayne Pritchett, who at that point handed the phone to her husband.

After talking it over with the caller, whose name nobody can remember, Pritchett invited the pair to Fayetteville to meet Drake in person and gave them directions.

“We didn’t know what might happen,” Delayne Pritchett laughed later. “They were complete strangers. They could have tried to kill him or kidnap him.”

As it turns out, McCoy knew of the kid from the “Beast of the East,” a tournament he won in Delaware back at Thanksgiving. They were both top-ranked and undefeated in their home states, and both had a tough time finding able, and willing workout partners.

Because the two had never wrestled before, competitively or otherwise, and possibly never would, the father made a request to the Pritchetts: Could his son have a friendly little go-around with Drake, you know, just to see?

The decision was McCoy’s, and once he agreed to the stranger’s challenge the private smack-down was on.

With just the two dads and McCoy’s sister watching and yelling, the Fayette County Tiger worked over the kid from Texas for nearly 30 minutes — until the father cried “enough.”

The man consulted privately with his son, sweating and panting uncontrollably in a dark corner, Chris Pritchett recalled, then approached and pleaded:

“Can we have another go-round tomorrow?”

“On Christmas Eve?” thought Pritchett as his eyes darted toward McCoy, who just nodded, as if to say, “Why not?” When you’ve wrestled and won more than 500 matches, what’s one more after all?

The Texans got a room at a local hotel that night, and on Christmas Eve morning the scene was repeated.

McCoy said he whispered advice and made suggestions to the challenger while they wrestled, just as he did the day before, but he didn’t go easy on the Texas youth.

“He was all right, a good kid,” McCoy would say later, shrugging with typical nonchalance. “He just needed some competition.”

So on the day most people were thinking of comfort and joy and a different kind of wishbone, McCoy gave the teen from somewhere in Texas too much heartache and pain, wrapped up in Tiger black and gold.

After about 20 minutes, the father ended the match when the boy started complaining that his chest hurt.

The kid might have been the best in Texas, but the father had to accept this truth: His son had gone face-to-face with the nation’s biggest and strongest high school wrestler, a kid from Fayette County named Drake McCoy, and his son had lost.

After exchanging phone numbers with the Pritchetts, the man offered his sincere thanks and good wishes for the holiday and drove with his son to the airport for the flight home.

The man and the son from the Lone Star State never made it to Warner Robins, Chris Pritchett pointed out later.

Could it be possible that they have no relatives in Georgia at all?