Gerald Coney is expected to be one of the wrestlers for Tift County Saturday at their annual duals. Coney placed at the 2019 state meet.

TIFTON — The Tift County Duals return this Saturday to the local high school. Ten teams are set to wrestle, even if Tift head coach Shawn Watson is not 100% sure of who the 10th team will be.

Watson has his Blue Devils scheduled, of course. They may wrestle as one team, perhaps two. That depends on what Ola High School will do. Ola, from Henry County, will be making its first ever appearance in Tifton. Watson said they will possibly bring two teams.

If Ola brings two squads, Tift will have one. If Ola has one squad, Tift will have two team entries.

Other teams scheduled to compete, said Watson, are Lee County, Lowndes, Colquitt County, Cook, Crisp County, Cairo and Thomas County Central.

Teams will be split into two pools. They will wrestle everyone else in the pool, as well as one crossover.

Action gets started Saturday morning. Watson is hopeful of finishing up during the afternoon, mindful that Georgia and LSU will play in the SEC championship at 4 p.m.

Lowndes won last year’s Tift Duals. Tift was sixth.

Tift County comes in following a solid showing at last week’s Grapple on the Gridiron in Valdosta, where they finished second in their pool.

“We probably should have won,” said Watson. Lee County won the pool with a 5-0 record to Tift’s 4-1. In the head-to-head meeting, Lee won, 42-37.

“I would like to say we wrestled fairly decent,” he said. One pool match-up that did have him concerned was against Vidalia. Tift came out ahead, 42-36, but Watson noted that Vidalia had several forfeits.

On a positive note, the Blue Devils easily outscored Lamar County, 60-21, and blasted a split Lowndes squad, 66-16.

Before going to Grapple on the Gridiron, Tift went 3-2 at Ola. Watson estimated the team has had about 20 matches so far. The increased mat time is something he likes.

Until recently, the Tift Duals were an invitational, a tournament setting that put wrestlers on a bracket. Watson switched that out to guarantee more matches for each wrestler. In the tournament format, the athlete’s day ended when eliminated from the bracket.

Tift will have a busy month of December. After their own meet, they will wrestle at Cook’s Hornet Duals next week. They are also set to compete at the Wildcat Invitational at Richmond Hill.