Griffith Earns 3rs and Final Wrestling Title

Senior Justin Griffith has capped off his Sanford High School Wrestling career with a state championship title in the 190 lbs weight class. This is his third straight state championship title and his fifth straight year making it to the championship in his weight class.

When asked which of his three championship titles felt the best, Justin said his second one because there were a “good amount of people” and the other kid he was wrestling was “really good and was a state champ too.” The match went to overtime and he said “either of us could’ve won, emotions filled me.”

According to Griffith, he’s been wrestling for about 14 years now. He says he got into it because “it’s kind of like a family thing. My whole family wrestled, at least on my dad’s side. My dad was a state champ in [New] Jersey so I kind of just got into it.”

However, his biggest inspiration for him was his older brother Timmy, who wrestled at Sanford and graduated in 2017, winning a state championship himself. Justin says that when we were working out his dad would hang up his brother’s state championship bracket. He would always look at it and think “Oh, one more, one more,” and he always wanted to “do better and be better than him.”

There are many memories that Justin has made throughout his wrestling career, and he says that his favorite memories are “most of the tournaments, not even wrestling, just getting to know everyone in the Delaware wrestling community.” But if he had to pick a favorite wrestling moment, he says it would be “winning a big tournament” from this year because he beat a lot of “ranked kids” and it’s “really cool to know you’re at the top and not losing.”

Justin’s next stop in his wrestling career is Drexel University. When asked why Drexel, he said he “narrowed it down to either Drexel or Navy” and didn’t think he was fit for the Navy. He also said the scholarship was “very nice” and that when he met the coaches and went out to dinner with the wrestling team they were “fun” and he thinks he could “really fit in there.”