Duckworth takes another step

Published 11:45 pm Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Taylor Duckworth’s prep career followed a steady climb of progress paralleled by the rise of the entire Dalton High wrestling program over those four years.

Now he’d like to see what he can do — both personally and for the team — at a college program starting from scratch.

Duckworth signed a combination scholarship on Tuesday with Lindsey Wilson College, an NAIA Division I program in Columbia, Ky., that will field its first wrestling team this fall. The Blue Raiders compete in the Mid-South Conference and will be coached by Corey Ruff, who was hired last fall to begin building the program.

Now Duckworth’s eager to do some construction himself.

“It’s their first year ever having wrestling, but I felt like the school was supporting it,” said Duckworth, who won the Region 7-4A 160-pound title as a senior with a dramatic, last-second victory and placed third at the Class 4A traditional state tournament despite suffering a second-round loss.

“There’s going to be a brand new wrestling facility and I just feel like the school’s behind it a lot. I felt like I could just go up there and give it my all to help start the team off.”

Duckworth met Ruff while attending a college fair at the Senior Nationals tournament in Virginia Beach, Va., in March. He later visited to the southern Kentucky school, which is about 230 miles north of Dalton, and said he liked the fact that the student body won’t be much bigger than that at Dalton.

Ruff is a first-time head coach, but has extensive experience as an assistant, according to a release on the Lindsey Wilson athletics Web site. He worked as an assistant at Ellsworth Community College in Iowa Falls, Iowa the past two years and was on the staff at Wisconsin-LaCrosse from 2003-06, a stretch that included a runner-up finish in the NAIA Division III National Championships.

The release also credited Ruff — whose previous work also includes serving as a high school assistant in Wisconsin — with helping coach four national champions, 24 All-Americans, 19 regional champions and 40 national qualifiers while at Ellsworth and Wisconsin-LaCrosse.

Duckworth is already preparing to take instructions from Ruff, following a workout plan from the coach to ready himself for the increased rigors of college wrestling. And Duckworth is looking forward to the prospect of what practicing with wrestlers from several different states will do for him.

“There will be so many different styles of wrestling,” said Duckworth, whose scholarship includes athletic and academic financial aid. “I’ll be able to learn a lot more and teach other people.”

The trajectory of Duckworth’s career so far should bring some valuable lessons for the fledgling program. He went 77-9, made the finals in five regular-season tournaments and was an All-Area selection as a senior, when he broke into a higher level after flirting with greater achievements in earlier seasons.

And that was similar to what Dalton’s Catamounts did during Duckworth’s time at the school. After a forgettable season for the Cats in Duckworth’s freshman year, Charles Mitchell took over in 2005 — he was the fourth coach in as many seasons — and helped lead the team to steady improvement that led to a breakout 2008-09 campaign.

The Cats won both the Area 7-4A traditional and duals titles, finished second at Class 4A state duals and placed fourth at the Class 4A state traditional tournament.

“It was really great, just seeing how we went from nothing my freshman year to placing second and fourth in state,” Duckworth said. “It shows anybody can do anything they want, it doesn’t matter how far down you are.”

Mitchell said when he arrived at Dalton, others told him Duckworth, who had undergone several health setbacks late in his middle school days, wasn’t worth the coach’s effort. In an interview earlier this year, Duckworth admitted he lost some of his motivation for a while as he tried to recover from surgery undergone to correct a skull and spinal defect.

But that obviously changed along the way as he became the first Dalton wrestler under Mitchell to go on to compete in college.

“When I got to Dalton, he was one of the kids that people told me couldn’t be successful, it wasn’t going to happen, I was wasting my time,” Mitchell said. “So I’m just really happy to see a complete turnaround for that kid, to see where he was at when I first got here to where he progressed this year.”

Although the Blue Raiders are new to wrestling, Duckworth isn’t — and he’s got things he hasn’t accomplished in his career he hopes to cross off the list at Lindsey Wilson.

Mitchell said it’s important for Duckworth to keep in mind that self-discipline is crucial for any freshman learning to balance his own time without the supervision he might have had growing up, and that’s especially important for student-athletes in college. But Duckworth seems driven to not lose any of the progress he’s made.

“I’ve been wrestling for probably 13 years,” Duckworth said. “I’d never won a state championship, never even placed, even when I was little, but I always came close. I knew last year I could do it, but I came up short, so hopefully I can go win a national championship in college.”