Logan Paradice wins
National Championship

Published 3:05 pm Thursday, July 24, 2025

MOULTRIE – Logan Paradice has done all he can to prove he is ready to compete at the highest level of collegiate wrestling.
Colquitt County’s three-time state title-holder got a late pin to win the 150-pound division of the 2025 U.S. Marine Corps Junior National Wrestling Championships on Saturday in Fargo, N.D.

Logan Paradice accepts the championship trophy at the Junior Freestyle National Championships. (Allyson Schwab Photography)

“It was surreal in the moment,” the 2025 Colquitt County High graduate said on Wednesday while relaxing at the beach. “But I try to stay in the word of God and give all the glory to Him.”
The Junior National Championships is the largest tournament for high school age wrestlers.
After proving he can conquer the best high school wrestlers in Georgia and in the nation, he is ready to prove himself against best collegians as well.
He has committed to wrestle at the University of Northern Iowa, which has one of the top programs in the country.
Paradice spent a week in Cedar Falls and got some work in with Panthers coach Doug Schwab before heading to Fargo.
“Coach Doug really helped me,” he said. “We worked on a few little things, refined a few things.”
As the top seed in his age group in the most prestigious tournament in the country, Paradice got a first round bye.
Then, Colquitt County coach Benjy Scarbor said, “He just dominated the tournament. And that is the elite of the elite.
“What he did is really something special.”
In the second round, he won 11-0; in the third, he won 10-0; in the fourth, 11-0 again.
The bye and those three wins sent him to the final-16 bracket.
There Paradice blanked his fourth straight opponent 10-0 before finally giving up points in a 12-2 quarterfinal victory.
Paradise finally was challenged in the semifinals, but he prevailed with a 5-1 victory.
Awaiting him in the title match was Dallas Russell, who also from Georgia and competed for Jefferson High.
It was the first time two Georgia wrestlers had met in the finals in Fargo and this one had a North Georgia vs. South Georgia sub-text.
Despite being in the same weight class in the same state, the pair had never squared off.
Russell also is an outstanding football player as well who played running back and safety at Jefferson High and comes from a family of wrestlers.
He has committed to wrestling at Oklahoma.

Logan Paradice celebrates after pinning Dallas Russell for the 150-pound National Championship. (Allyson Schwb Photography)

“I knew who he was,” Paradice said. “I knew he had done some great things.”
The national championship match was close until the closing seconds when Paradise launched a double-leg attack that almost knocked Russell off the mat.
“After he fell back, I got him in a head-and-arm position,” Paradice said.
The referee smacked the mat moments later and Paradice had won his first national championship with a pin in the closing seconds in his final bout as high schooler.
“I think we both might have been more active if it had not been the finals,” Paradice said of his bout with Russell. “We could have opened it up a little more.”
Scarbor said Paradice did not place at Fargo last year and was sixth in 2023 and fourth in 2022.
He was determined to go out on top in 2025.
With Paradice’s title, Georgia wrestlers have now won Junior Freestyle National Championships eight times since 1993 and Harrison High’s Sean Hage won three of those in 1993, 1994 and 1995 at 191 pounds.
A Georgia wrestler claimed another title this year in Fargo when Mill Creek’s Antonio Mills won at 126 pounds.
Paradice said his national championship would have been impossible without the preparation provided by his coaches, including Storm Wrestling’s Gerald Carr, his father Jeremy Paradice, brother Austin Paradice and his high school coaches, Benjy Scarbor and Wilder Elliott.

Logan Paradice grapples with Dallas Russell in the finals of the 150-pound class at the Junior Freestyle National Championships held recently in Fargo, S.D. (Allyson Schwab Photography)

Paradice is eager to begin competing as a collegiate wrestler.
He also is looking forward to begin work on becoming an anesthesiologist.
And he sounds as if he wouldn’t mind following in his father’s footsteps.
After a career change in his mid-30s, Jeremy Paradice earned his medical degree from Mercer University in 2023 and shortly thereafter began a residency in internal medicine at Atrium Health in Macon.
He also manages to find time to coach wrestling with The Storm program in Perry.
“Who knows?” Logan asked. “God willing, maybe I’ll be coaching too.”