Wrestling’s growth in Beaufort County has been steady for quite some time, but with the amount of hardware it keeps hauling in, the interest is sure to keep rising.

The P.S. Jones wrestling team went unscathed in all of their conference and non-conference matchups this year, finishing 13-0 after finishing 10-3 a year ago. The undefeated mark was good for first place in the Pitt County Middle School Athletic Conference, and they finished second in the postseason tournament at A.G. Cox Middle School on Saturday afternoon.

Five Demons wrestlers took home first-place in their respective weight class: Dashawn Smith, Bryant Smith, Cade Mixon, Walker Heath and Gabe Davis.

Among the five, Bryant Smith and Mixon didn’t lose a single match the entire year, and they were proud of it.

“It felt really good,” Bryant Smith said. “I went 12-3 last year, so it was good to come back and be undefeated. … I had high expectations for us to do good. We had a good team, a lot of new people, but they caught on fast. We just started out really well and kept the mindset that we could keep doing it.”

Mixon echoed his teammates comments on Wednesday afternoon.

“It definitely felt good. We had a tough season last year, had a lot of good people on that team that we lost coming into this year,” Mixon said. “This year the competition was about the same, but we just came out a lot better this year.”

There were some times this season that the Demons wrestlers had to wrestle up a weight class, and some of those matches spoiled the hopeful wrestlers to remain undefeated individually.

After last year’s second-place conference finish, head coach John Cutler was ecstatic about his team winning the conference this season.

“It was special for this group. Especially the eighth graders because they didn’t do as well last year,” Cutler said. “It was a big change from last year. We filled every weight class this year, and we had some more leadership. We had plenty of seventh and eighth graders on the team pushing everybody in practice, and that was important.”

P.S. Jones will send about half of its team to wrestle for a stout Washington High School team next year. The Pam Pack is coming off of its sixth-consecutive conference title. Expectations will be high for the eighth grade graduating class.