Stewart selected as All-Area wrestler of year

Being the oldest in a family of five boys doesn’t place any unwanted pressure on Brookville junior Zeb Stewart.

“It puts expectations on me,” said Stewart, The News & Advance All-Area wrestler of the year. “But I just wrestle because I enjoy it.”

Instead of sibling rivalry, the Stewarts — Zeb, Eli, Luke, Reid and Hudson — have a sibling support system that spurs one another on to success on the mat.

“In all honesty, we all hope to be the best, but we all want each other to be better than the next,” Zeb said. “We all know each other’s potential, we all work really hard, and we all expect each other to succeed.”

The Seminole District wrestler of the year was ranked No. 1 all season at 130 pounds, coming off a third-place finish at the Group AA state championships in Salem. He pinned Jefferson Forest freshman Josh Bowyer in the district tournament final, leading the Bees to their 40th consecutive team title.

Stewart then captured a Region III crown with a 16-0 technical fall against Lord Botetourt’s Zach Hodges before falling short of his goal of claiming his first state gold medal, going 5-1 to repeat his bronze medal showing and finish 43-2 on the year.

“I had a pretty solid season all the way up to the state tournament and just kind of choked,” he said of being pinned by Christiansburg’s Brady Epperly in the second period of the second round. “I made a mental mistake.”

Stewart wrestled like a raging bull after that loss, riding his fury all the way to the consolation final.

“I lost and was kind of wrestling upset,” he said. “It was kind of a let down (but) my dad (Warren, a former All-American at Liberty University) kept telling me to wrestle tough and I did. Coach (Don Shuler) told me, ‘This is where you really get tougher, (in the wrestlebacks).’ I’d have much rather gotten tougher in the finals, but it happens.”

A year-round wrestler with hopes of continuing his career in college, Stewart enjoys working out and sparring with his brothers and teammates to fine-tune his techniques on the mat.

“It’s a lot more fun now,” he said of the offseason, noting he is training with Brookville teammate Randy Brooks after school nearly every day, rather than Eli, the biggest of his younger brothers at 119 pounds. “He’s a little heavier than me and him and I have really been training hard. Now I have somebody who’s competitive and really likes wrestling.”

Stewart is fully focused on this weekend’s Virginia Amateur Wrestling Association junior state freestyle championships in Richmond, where he can qualify for the July junior national championships in Fargo, N.D., by finishing in the top two.

“That’s probably the biggest high school wrestling tournament in the nation,” said Stewart, who will travel to a tournament nearly every weekend throughout the summer, including one in Maryland next week and another in Pennsylvania, where he and his dad will stay with his grandfather.

“I only take two to three weeks off in August,” Stewart said. “Other than that, I’ll be wrestling all summer and I’m excited to come back next year and win (the Group AA state tournament) for the first time. I’ve been wanting to win it since my freshman year.”

The expectations are partly external, but mostly come from within.

“I pray every night I’ll be a two-time state champion and a three-time national champion in college and then an Olympic champion,” Stewart said in February as the Bees prepared for the postseason.

That would put him in the company of his dad and coach, former NCAA and Olympic qualifiers, respectively.