Heritage grad named Georgia Positive Athlete Award winner
Recent Heritage graduate Christian Merrill was named as the 2020 Positive Athlete Georgia state award winner for high school wrestling earlier this summer. Merrill had been named the Northwest Georgia Area winner for wrestling earlier this year.
“When I first found out, I was excited,” Merrill explained. “I showed my mom and my dad and they told me how proud they were. It just filled me with joy. I was happy I won the award and happy I was nominated.”
According to its website, Positive Athlete is a celebration of young athletes who have overcome difficult circumstances, given back to their schools and communities in a significant way or just have an infectious positive attitude that makes everyone around them a better person.
Merrill, who also ran cross country for the Generals for four years, was a fouryear member of the Heritage wrestling team that finished in the top four at state in 2017. As a junior, he advanced all the way to state sectionals for the second time in his career.
“I feel like that was my best year wrestling,” he said of his junior season. “I made it as far as sectionals and when I got there, I had the confidence I needed. But I think the crowd was just kind of overwhelming to me...I had my heart set for state and I never made it and that was heartbreaking.”
However, some unusual weight and strength loss after the season would land Merrill in the hospital where he was ultimately diagnosed with Type I Diabetes.
Undaunted, Merrill was able to recover enough and learn enough about his diabetes to the point where he could compete again in both sports.
“I couldn’t eat like I used to,” he explained. “That helped me lose the weight for wrestling, so it wasn’t that big of a problem. The way I worked around it was just to take my medicine. I also checked my blood sugar after every match and after every cross country meet, before and after. I just needed to stay healthy, you know?”
Mike Craft, who coaches the wrestling team and helps out with cross country team, said Merrill was a great choice for the award and epitomizes what the Positive Athlete Award is about.
“Christian experienced success in wrestling during his career, but he was not able to achieve the success he was capable of because of his health,” Craft explained. “He continued to work for success in wrestling. His success was up and down depending on his health, but he always keep a good attitude and never complained.”
Craft said even when Merrill was eliminated from competition at the area tournament in his senior year, he still helped his teammates and the coaching staff all the way through to the state tournament. The coach also explained that even though an injury cost him a chance to run in the region cross country meet last season, Merrill was still there to help his team prepare for the championships, even while holding down a job.
“The coaches could always count on Christian to do anything that was needed to help the team,” he said. “Although he experienced a lot of hardship, he always kept a positive attitude.”
Merrill said he felt he owed it to the younger wrestlers on the team to lead the same way some of the team veterans led the way when he was coming up through the ranks.
“My freshman year, I had a bunch of good friends, like Chucky Thurman and Daniel and Dylan Jernagin, and they really helped me get through some tough times,” he said. “They even wrestled with me to toughen me up and I felt like I needed to do the same thing for the younger guys and try to motivate them.”
Merrill said he just tried to always stay positive for himself and his teammates.
“My senior year, when I came back. I stayed positive through the summer and worked,” he said. “I just tried to get my teammates to keep their heads up after some hard losses. That helped me through some hard times and Coach helped me through a hard time. My parents helped me too. They motivated me to keep working hard and to keep going to practices and working out. That’s really all an athlete needs.
“I was a hard worker and it was my mindset that kept me going. I was always happy to go run with some friends and go work out and help them. I learned that I could help my teammates through a hard time like I was going through.”
Merrill said he plans to attend Dalton State this fall.
“I want to become a teacher so I can come back and become a coach and keep this whole motivation (thing) running,” he added.
“Christian led by example through hard work, doing the right things and doing anything that needed to be done,” Craft added. “I cannot think of anyone else I have coached who has endured more hardship and continued to work through adversity, while not complaining and keeping a positive attitude.”
Merrill is the second Heritage athlete to win a state award from Positive Athlete Georgia in the last two years. Ryan Craft won the boys’ multi-sport award in 2019.