From Fried Rice to State Championships: A Unique Perspective on Cobb County Sports!

The Cobb Sports Podcast goes on the road to the Marietta Square Market for some global food and local high school sports discussion. Cobb Schools had an impressive winter sports season and basketball is just getting started in the early stages of the postseason, "March to Macon."

Eric and Brad discuss their lunch choices at the Market, as well as several of the stories and athletes they have covered the last couple months. Sharpen your Cobb Sports knowledge with this "new and improved" on-location episode of the podcast.

Cobb County School District is one of the largest districts in the country with over 16 competing high schools and a deep pool of talent in every sport.

This is the Cobb Sports Podcast.

Let's dig in.

Alright, well, we are trying something new on the Cobb Sports Podcast.

Brad and I are sitting here at the Marietta Market.

If you can tell from the.

We just, just got some lunch.

So we wanted to talk a little bit about, about the, the, the establishments that we, that we spent our lunch money on today.

Brad, where did you, where did you have your lunch?

Yeah, it's, it's the Marietta Square Market.

Oh, Marietta Square Market.

Okay.

In case you were confused.

Yeah, I went, I tried something new today.

I went to the Fried rice master and the fried rice master did pretty good for me.

I was pretty masterful.

As you would.

As you would hope, right, exactly.

Fried Rice master should.

Did you get just a. I did

a little, I did the house fried rice with shrimp.

Yeah, it was good.

Yeah.

You recommend it?

I would recommend.

All right, very good.

So there's, there's a batting one out of one.

In fact, we, we tried to do a dry run here a couple weeks ago, but it didn't, it didn't work out for whatever reason.

And so tell what, what, what you had then too?

Yeah, I had a, I can't remember the name of the establishment.

There's just, if you don't know, there's, you know, several different, like a dozen, if not more counter service restaurants in the, in the Meredith Square Market.

And I went to the place that I got a Philly cheesesteak.

It was really good.

Okay.

And I've been here to several different places.

You know, it's been around for several years.

So there's a, it changes from time to time.

So there's good places to eat.

Yeah.

And of course it's right by the square, so it's centrally located.

My first, my first time, or at least my first time here with Brad, I got a chicken gyro, I think I'm saying that right, Gyro with a side of hummus.

And it was really good.

It was right near the same place you got your cheesesteak from.

And then today I went to De Cuban or day Cuban, I guess to say it as an American.

And I got a chicken bowl and it was outstanding.

It was very good.

There was a plantain in it and black beans and rice and some seasoned chicken and something that I thought was a potato and it wasn't.

Wasn't.

Maybe that was, maybe that was a Plantain, also that.

That.

That I was eating in there, but.

So there was a.

There's like a crispy plantain in there.

Like a garnish, but.

Yeah, so there we go.

That's.

That's.

That's.

That's four out of four.

Yeah.

And you have.

You have other options, too.

There's a Bourbon street place that has Cajun food.

There's a pizza place.

There's a burger joint.

We're sitting right next to the Korean Bistro.

Korean bistro.

There's also an Italian eatery here.

So there's all kinds of food.

Right now I'm sitting in a chair that is dedicated to, apparently a famous Mariana named David Owen.

And I guess I got to find out who this person is, but I'll see what he recommends in this place.

Wait, what?

I just threw you off there.

It's okay.

David Owen works in the communications department as well, so it must be an inside joke.

He's just, you know, he's.

He's pretty solid in Marietta, people.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

All right.

All right.

So there's probably a lot of chairs dedicated to David Owen.

All right, so let's get down to the real.

The real point here.

And.

And this is something that we would like to do.

Just go around to different places.

Brad.

Brad and I just started occasionally going out to lunch, and that sparked.

That sparked an interest about taking the COB Sports podcast on the road, at least around, you know, the local road, and combining two of our favorite things to do.

Watch.

Watch sports and eat food.

Yeah, exactly.

And so that's.

If you have a recommendation, contact us and let us know where we should go next.

So on to the real purpose of the Cobb Sports podcast.

Brad Sports.

So we've just.

We're really close to wrapping up the winter season.

We're in the.

We.

Last night was with the end of the first round of basketball.

Basketball playoffs.

So we got about two more weeks, Two and a half more weeks left in basketball season, and that'll officially be the end of the winter sports season.

But along with.

With other winter sports, there's.

There's wrestling, there's swimming, and maybe.

Maybe some other things that I'm also forgetting.

But, you know, you did a lot of reporting on swimming and wrestling, so do you want to just give a quick recap of what happened there?

Yeah.

So I'll start with swimming, because that season ended first.

We've obviously always been strong.

We, meaning Cobb schools, have always been strong in the realm of the swim and dive championships.

And this year, Was no different.

We had several teams that, I mean, like, probably 100 different swimmers through our different classifications, 4A, 5A and 6A that were state qualifiers this year.

And we had several that finished in the top five during that time.

We had six different top five finishers in 4A over, you know, between Altoona and Altoona kind of covered it for us in 4A.

And then in 5A we had 40 top five finishers, and eight of those were champions, including the team champions.

And I'll get back to that in a minute.

And then in 6A, we had 18 top five finishers and three champions.

And so state championships that, you know, if you're counting with me, that was 11 state championships that we had in Cobb schools.

And just to kind of go through it, The Harrison girls 200 medley relay won the state championship.

And Caroline Hughes from wheeler won the 100 meter, or, I'm sorry, the 100 yard breaststroke.

And then Harrison girls 400 freestyle relay also won the state championship.

And then in 5A.

You know, we've been very strong for several years, as you know, because coach Brittany Hughes at Lasseter coming into this season had won six straight state championship state team championships with her girls swim and dive team.

Would you be inclined to call that a dynasty?

I think that qualifies as a dynasty as far as the length of success and continuing to do it.

And she again won with the girls this year for her seventh in a row.

But on top of that, she also led the boys team to a state championship this year.

So their first one.

Right, Their first one in school history.

And so now she will have eight championship rings to.

To figure out how to.

She's running out of fingers.

Yeah, she's running out of fingers, but she's gonna be bedazzling as she walks around town with all these things.

But we've had several state championships other than the teams there.

And, you know, a couple of them are from lasseter.

The boys 50 freestyle winner was Gavin, I believe his last name was Halosick.

Okay.

And he set a county record this year.

And so he came home with the state championship.

And then The Laster boys 200 freestyle relay team won the state championship.

Ashlyn Lofton repeated as a state championship as a state champion in the 100 yard breaststroke.

Okay.

And then.

Is this her senior year?

This is her senior year.

And she's gonna go swim for East Carolina, I believe, next year.

Interesting thing about her is that she didn't even start competitive swimming until her freshman year in high school.

Oh, really?

And she parlayed it into back to back individual championships.

And she has been a part of three team championships.

And now she's gonna get a scholarship to go swim in college.

That's amazing.

So, you know, if you think because you've never done a sport, you know, since elementary school, like some of these kids have done.

Ashlyn.

Right.

Yeah.

She proves that it's never too late.

Yeah, it's never too late.

Just finishing up on our state champions, the Laster boys 400 freestyle relay.

One state champion, the state championship.

And then Isaiah Tucker from Kennesaw Mountain won two individual state championships in the 100 yard backstroke and the 100 yard butterfly.

So we kind of dominated in the swim dive competition.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

You're on a roll here, Brad.

Why don't you move into wrestling?

Yeah, okay.

Well, wrestling, we were pretty solid as well.

We had 78 state qualifiers from Cobb schools this year between boys and girls.

And we had.

Wait, say that again.

Between boys and girls.

We had a total of seven 78 state qualifier.

Yeah, that makes up almost 10% of the state qualifiers for our three, really four classifications.

So, you know, in wrestling, it's we.

They keep the 4a, 5a, 6a for the boys and then the girls are all lumped into one classification.

So over the span of all those brackets, we had almost 10% of the wrestlers in that whole time.

So that's amazing.

Yeah.

Eight of our girls finished in the top five and then 22 of our boys finished in the top five.

And we had four state champions, two from Walton.

Nathaniel park was the state champion in the 144 pound weight class.

And his teammate, Jack Raum won the state title in the 165 pound weight class.

And then the other two was Demetrius Haywood from Hillgrove, which is a great story.

He moved here from Maryland, I believe, the summer before his junior year or maybe before his sophomore year.

And the coach at Hill Grove said the very.

One of the very first matches that Demetrious wrestled in was in an open tournament where he almost beat the state champion from South Carolina.

Really?

And they knew at that point that, okay, this kid's going to be special.

So he won it in the 165 pound weight class and he defeated.

The wrestler he defeated was from South Cobb and somebody who had beaten him pretty handily almost a week before that.

So he got a bit of revenge there.

And then in the 215 pound weight class, Ronan Ahn from North Cobb completed back to back undefeated seasons and won the State championship this year.

And he, he was a freshman All American, a sophomore All American, and it's probably a good bet he's going to be a junior All American as well.

Yeah.

And he's following actually in his sister's footsteps.

Yes.

Genevieve was, I think she was a four time state champion for Kennesaw.

Kenesaw Mountain.

Right.

Yeah.

And so I mean, it's just, it's an on tradition, apparently, that you just, you just dominate on the mat.

Yeah, so.

So, yeah, good job.

So four overall state champs in four different, obviously in four different weight classes.

And 11.

You say swim champions.

Yes, it was 11 swim champions.

Eight in 5A and three in 6A.

Wow.

Amazing.

So good.

Yeah.

So now we would move on to basketball.

But first I want to talk about some of the articles that we've also written on the Cloudsports site.

And one of those is somewhat related to North Cobb wrestling.

Well, it's pretty related to North Cobb wrestling.

Coach Fredenberg.

Mike Fredenberg was a wrestler and a football player and he also ran.

He was a, he was a thrower in track.

It was their second, their second class for the high school and he was part of that class.

And now he's back, he was in Florida for a number of years.

He coached around different parts of Georgia and then they were in Florida for maybe like the last 10 years or so.

But he's back now coaching at North Cobb.

Cushing assistant coaching on the football team and on the wrestling team.

And he, he has his son with him who is, who's also an excellent wrestler.

And I think Madden, Madden Fredenberg.

Didn't he get like fifth or something?

He placed fifth in this year's state tournament.

Yeah.

So that, that article, you can read more about Coach Fredenberg and his son from North Cobb on the Cobb sports site.

And did you have any articles you wanted to mention?

Yeah, I mentioned Coach Brittany Hughes Prior.

You know, the article that I wrote about her definitely covers the state championships that she's won and the string and the dynasty she has with the swim team.

But it also kind of touches on the fact that she's a school counselor at Lasseter as well, and how that is just as important, maybe more important even than what she does on the pool deck.

But it also helps her as a coach, too.

So a great article just talking about who she is and the wins she has both in and around the pool.

Okay.

So yeah, those Are two sports related, but they're, they're both a little bit broader than sports.

They're very, very human interest.

So you don't necessarily have to be a sports fanatic too.

And we're, we're trying to do that a little bit more is.

Have more general interest, I guess, feature pieces that we, that we run make them a little bit broader and not just about wins and losses and, you know, goals scored and other things like that.

So let's quickly, if we can talk about basketball.

We have.

We'll.

We'll start with girls basketball first.

For the whole district, we have.

Well, we had, let's see, five, six.

We had six teams make it, make it to the playoffs.

For the girls, for the girls, four teams in 6A, one team in 5A and one team in 4A, the Kel Longhorn girls.

They, in their first round game, they played Union, Union Grove and they beat them quite a bit, 60, 62 to 31.

And doubled them up.

Yeah, they did double them up.

And now because they're the number one seed, Kel will host Southwest DeKalb.

I'm not sure when all these games will be played, but, but, but, but the second round happens this weekend in 5A for, for Cobb.

Spraberry was the only team to make it through to the playoffs.

They unfortunately lost their.

Their first round game over coffee or coffey beat them 67 to 39.

So good job making it to the playoffs, Spraberry, and we'll see you definitely next year.

Then the four teams from.

From four girls teams from, from 6A.

We have Hillgrove, Campbell, Wheeler and McEachern all.

All made it into.

Into the playoffs.

And now we only have two teams left that are.

That are moving on to the second round.

Cherokee beat McEachern 73, 66 to eliminate them.

And Campbell cannibalized one of our.

One of our own teams.

They beat Wheeler 60 to 48 to eliminate Wheeler from the playoffs and end their season.

But now, now Campbell moves on and they will host North Forsyth.

And then the last, last 6A team is Hillgrove.

And I was at, I was at this game last night.

Hillgrove played Marietta and they eliminated Marietta 62 to 55.

Now, now Hillgrove moves on to play the number one seed, Carrollton, which is a tall order as coach Sue Malam tells us.

They're good.

We've matched up with them before, so we've played in their gym.

They're a good team.

It's just like this game.

There are no.

You got to come ready to fight and compete, and that's what the state playoffs are.

So it's another top 10 matchup, and we've got to get ourselves ready to go in a day and be ready to play.

I'm just so proud of the girls.

I really am.

You know, that's a statement win for us.

I don't think a lot of people believed we were going to win this game even though we were the higher seed.

So I'm proud.

Like I said, I'm proud of them for sticking together and coming out and just competing, flat out competing.

So it was an amazing game.

It was a back and forth game.

The Hill Grove girls went in at halftime, up 10 points.

It looked like they had the game in hand, but Marietta did not quit and made it a competitive game during the third quarter.

And coach sue caught a couple of very strategic timeouts to recenter her girls, get them refocused again.

And then they kicked it back up again in the fourth quarter and they were able to eliminate Marietta.

So great game.

It was a fun environment last night at Hill Grove.

It was loud.

They bring a DJ in there and it's loud.

I mean, it's.

I know I'm an old dude, but it's loud in there.

It's so loud you can't even hear yourself talk.

But.

But it was a great environment.

Lots of people showed up and so congratulations, Hill Grove.

All right, so let's talk about boys basketball.

This is.

This is impressive.

So we had.

I didn't, I didn't total these up here, but I.

We have six.

Four.

Okay, so we had 12.

We had 12 teams in the, in

the playoffs over three classifications.

Three classifications.

And we have.

Of those 12, eight are moving on to the second round.

So we have.

We had six.

We'll, we'll start from 6A.

On, on the, on the boys side, Hillgrove played Walton.

I was at that game also.

Another.

Another good game.

Another competitive game.

Coach Bo Abney runs an outstanding program as, as you hear Coach.

Coach Moultrie say here, here in a minute.

But it was a.

It was a great game.

It was very back and forth.

Hillgrove led pretty much the whole game.

Walton.

Walton would get up by a point or two every once in a while.

But for the most, for the most part, Hillgrove was in control of the game, but.

But never was never out of hand.

It was, it was always.

It was always anybody's game.

And again, it was a.

It was a competitive environment.

It was, it was loud and.

But Hillgrove pulled out the win.

56, 53.

And now they move on to play Westlake.

So they'll travel to play Westlake.

As we hear Coach Moultrie also say,

I think Walton was a very disciplined, well coached team and we were going to have to be more disciplined than they were and make more plays than they were.

I like that we stood up in adversity that we didn't fold, that we stood together, we stayed together and we battled through the adversity Today show and then crack under the pressure.

It's going to be a tough environment to play, go down there at Westlake.

So we got to make sure we focus up and be silent and because it's just going to get harder from here, it's just a great win.

Like I said, Watson's well coached team, they're ready to prepare.

So it was a great first round battle for us.

And then we also had Pebblebrook, they played at Cherokee.

So they played the second game that McEachern girls lost to Cherokee.

But then Pebblebrook boys also went to Cherokee and they, and they beat them.

So they beat them in their own house.

Pebblebrook Beach, Cherokee 79, 72.

And now they move on to play Lambert.

McEachern has been a good dominant team all year.

Definitely one to keep your eye on.

They eliminated Marietta at home, 89s to 61.

And now McEachern gets to host Chapel Hill.

And then Wheeler again cannibalized one of our own teams, Osborne 90 to 58.

The Wheeler will now host South Forsyth.

And this is, this is an interesting thing that it kind of caught me off guard too, because I was wondering why Campbell wasn't in the playoffs because if you look at the standings, Campbell's actually higher than Osborne.

But it all comes down to the region playoffs.

So Osborne beat Campbell in the region playoffs.

So that put them in the fourth spot and, and put them unfortunately playing a very, very well coached, very dominant Wheeler team that will probably be heading to Macon here.

Unless, unless something goes, unless something goes wrong.

But.

But yeah, so, so Osborne had, did have a, have a good season and they, they came on at the end and they were able to eat.

They were able to beat Campbell.

And another team that had a really good region tournament was Altoona, which we'll talk about here in just a minute.

But let's talk about some of the five A teams.

First.

There was four teams.

Kennesaw Mountain, Pope, Spraberry and Lassiter.

Kennesaw Mountain, they beat Noonan 56, 55.

So one point win there for the Mustangs.

And now they will travel to Houston County.

Houston county did eliminate Pope, so they were in the same.

In the same bracket, on the same corner of the bracket.

So Houston county beat Pope 67, 48.

And like I said, they will.

They will be at home, and they will.

And they will host the Kennesaw Mountain Mustangs.

Spraberry boys, they beat Coffey 60 to 57.

And now they will head to Alexander, who's undefeated in region play.

Alexander's a really, a really tough team.

So that's a big, That's a big, That's a big ask for the, for the Spraberry boys.

So we'll, we'll.

We'll hope to see them play their, their best game of the season against Alexander this weekend.

Then finally, Lassiter, who's been having an outstanding season.

You actually went to this game, Brad Lassiter beat veterans.

Yep.

I talked to an alumni of Lassiter and he told me that this is the first time.

Time that Lasseter has won the region title in 35 years.

Is it really?

So it's been a long time.

And they are undefeated at home this year.

And you can really tell the crowd is there all the time.

You know, Laster student section, one student section a year this year for the second time in a row.

And it shows up at their home games because the crowd's really into it.

And, you know, this game last night, it was amazing how they were playing veterans.

That's the name of the high school.

And veterans scored the first bucket of the game.

But then Lasseter went on a 15, 0 run and they basically just, they shut it down right at that point and then just, you know, carried it through for the rest of the game.

So it was a really good game.

And, you know, Coach McCauley, I talked to him afterwards, and he kind of explained what he thought went into this win.

This is new territory for a lot of these guys.

The state tournament, one of the best tournaments in the entire country.

This classification is filled with great teams, great coaches, got a lot of respect for veterans.

We knew they were going to come in, be scrappy first bucket.

As a coach, you always love just because they can settle in a little bit.

Once we made our first, I thought you saw our defensive energy and our connectivity that was there for large pockets of the first half.

I thought it took us a little bit to get going in the second half.

Once we did, that's where we separate ourselves.

So when we defend and rebound the way we did tonight, it'll give us some opportunities and then we really space teams out I think and bring teams out to us which opens up the interior of the paint for us.

So the more we do that and not settle for quick shots but move the ball like you saw in large pockets today, we're tough to guard.

All right, so finally we have the boys 4A in basketball.

We had two teams make it through to the playoffs, Kell and Alatoona.

The fact that there are only two teams that we, that we have in the district that are.

That are four A classified Eagles.

Landing Christian beat Kell so eliminated them end of their season 74 to 60.

Altoona was able to beat Jackson Altoona 56 to 54.

So now they will host east for scythe.

So I said Altoona had an interesting region story.

They dominated their region tournament.

So they, they went into the tournament, I think the third seed in.

In their.

In their standings and they.

They beat everybody in the.

In the region tournament to, to take the number one seed.

So that's why they'll be.

They'll be playing at home two weeks in a row or two games in a row here, eliminating Jackson Atlanta and then.

And then now hosting east for site.

So that, that gives them a.

A very good chance of moving into what will be next the quarterfinals.

Right?

Yeah.

So good job Altoona.

Good job to all of our.

All of our teams.

So eight.

Eight of our teams as I mentioned are in or are in to the second round.

That's half, that's half of our boys programs.

We have 16.

16 high schools.

16 sports high schools in the district and so half of those are playing in the second round.

Wheeler obviously is a favorite.

They been at one point this year they were ranked number one nationally.

So you know they're one of the better teams in the state.

Right.

And they're defending state champions.

Yeah.

You know, beyond that, you know, Eric, that we have a team locked in for making in the state championships.

You know that.

No, I did not.

Yeah, GHSA in the last couple years they've started these three point contests and slam dunk contests.

And this year one of the co ed three point teams is from Walton and Ben Holland and Karina Barton are the co ed three point team and they've made the finals that will perform at Macon for the state championship in the co ed three point contest on the Friday of that championship weekend.

Yeah, those are always.

It was kind of fun.

They make it.

They try to make Macon a little bit like an all star weekend that they have a slam dunk contest.

They have a, obviously three point shooting.

I think this might be the first year that they're having co ed three point shooting.

But, but yeah, they, they try and you know, give you, give you things to watch in between the games.

So yeah, going down to Macon for, for any one of the days, it's just, it's a fun experience.

You get to see, see some high level basketball, but you also, they make it fun.

Yeah.

I saw today on the, the state brackets that, and this may not be new, but it's new to me.

But they're calling it March to Macon and they.

Oh yeah.

So it's, it's definitely a big event.

Yeah.

So.

And that brings up the final point I wanted to make.

Things are going to change quite a bit for basketball next year and, and we'll do a podcast with Don Baker as we get, as we get closer to it next year.

But it's going to be more of a, of a March Madness type bracket rather than probably region tournaments won't exist anymore, at least in the form that they're, that they're the, the, the weight that they have now.

But it's, it's going to be interesting how, how things work next year.

It'll be kind of a true big tournament.

Big, big state tournament.

So we'll keep you up to date on that.

I don't really know how the whole thing's going to work, Don.

Don knows all the in and outs on those kind of things, but it'll be, it'll be fun, it'll be new and hopefully exciting.

Yeah, I think they're doing that in football as well.

Right.

So it's definitely going to be some changes next year.

Yeah.

So thanks for listening to this new and improved hopefully edition of the Kyle Sports Podcast.

Thanks for listening and we will be back next time.