After the Whistle: Sussex Tech’s Anthony Andrews

GEORGETOWN, Del. – Sussex Tech wrestler Anthony Andrews knows what it’s like to win a championship. But now after consecutive first-round exits for the Ravens in the state tournament, Andrews and Tech are trying to set the bar even higher.

Andrews, now a senior, first took to the mat when he was four years old. “I’ve been wrestling ever since I could walk. It’s kind of cemented in my brain now,” he said. “My first practice, I hated it. Like, I didn’t like wrestling. I was getting off the mat crying. And then, the second practice, you know, I just went in there, and I just started rolling around, and it kind of just kind of just clicked ever since.”

Well over a decade later, the persistence he showed as a child helped shoot him to Delaware wrestling’s highest peak: an individual state championship wrestling at 126 pounds in his junior season. “It was a super rewarding experience,” Andrews recalled, “because I come in the room every day, right? Working for one goal, at the end to be a state champ. I don’t think there’s ever been another moment in my life that is really that is really compared to that.”

But Andrews doesn’t waste too much time reflecting on the past, his sights firmly set on his senior season ahead of him. “Obviously the goal for myself and for the team is a state title. So that’s really what I’m thinking about right now.”

And it all starts with the work the ravens do in the practice room–nobody knows that better than Andrews. “I love being a leader on this team, and I love being a role model to the younger guys…I want to see them all succeed. So I want them to think the same for me. You know, I want to push these guys because I want them to push me back,” Andrews said.

With the gauntlet thrown down, Anthony Andrews and Sussex Tech wrestling are preparing to meet the moment: “Everybody’s pushing everybody. Everybody comes in here with an expectation to get better every single day.”