Chelsea High’s Ledbetter is school’s first state wrestling champion

Aaron Ledbetter made school history when he captured the Class 6A 120-pound title at the AHSAA Wrestling Championships in Huntsville.

Ledbetter, a Chelsea High junior, won his school’s first wrestling championship with a sudden victory over Muscle Shoals’ Brennen Shankles in the final. 

Ledbetter finished with a record of 44-17 for the season.

Sudden victory is an overtime period if the wrestlers are tied after three periods.

Ledbetter was anxious about the championship match. His opponent had beaten the wrestler Ledbetter had lost to in sectionals.

 “He kind of dominated the first period,” Ledbetter said. “But as the match went on, I started feeling a lot better about myself. He seemed to start getting worn down, and I got a lot more confident.

 “When we went to overtime, I was almost for sure I was going to win. I had been in three overtimes already this season and hadn’t lost. So after the third period I could tell I had the advantage going into overtime.”

He felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment and achievement when the match was over.

 “All that hard work I’ve put into wrestling for seven, eight years finally paid off… all the practice and extra stuff paid off when I won that state title.”

Ledbetter has been wrestling since fifth-grade. His father, Wayne, decided to get he and his brother involved in wrestling, because, he said with a laugh, “I was tired of them fighting with each other all the time.”

But there were no wrestling programs in Chelsea at the time. 

“I couldn’t find any place,” Ledbetter said. So he took his sons to Alabaster and got them started in the Warrior Wrestling Club. “Over time, I recruited some other prospective wrestlers to come over there with me.”

After a while, he enlisted Ken Waller to help start a wrestling program in Chelsea. 

Aaron said of Waller, “He’s had a huge impact on our wrestling program. He’s really helped manage the program, and when we didn’t have a head coach, he took on a huge role to keep things going.

 “If it weren’t for him, we might not even have a wrestling program.”

The high school program began at Chelsea High when Aaron was in the seventh-grade and he was a member of that inaugural team. Coaches have come and gone, but current head coach Ben East seems to have provided stability. He came from Pelham.

 “We’ve literally had a different head coach every year since seventh grade.” Ledbetter said. “So we were getting to that point where we were kind of coaching ourselves and didn’t really trust anybody coming in. But when he came in, he’s really changed the program around.”

Moving into his senior year, Ledbetter has his sights set as repeating as a state champion.

“That’s the goal,” he said.