Franklin, TN | February 2026
Nobody walked into Page High School on Saturday night knowing who owned Region 6.
Not the wrestlers.
Not the coaches.
Not the brackets.
With the first year of a sweeping region and section realignment, the 2026 TSSAA Girls Region 6 Championship arrived without a hierarchy. Twenty-two schools showed up with equal uncertainty and equal hope, each believing they might be the team to emerge from the chaos of a new postseason landscape.
By the time the final whistle sounded, that uncertainty was gone.
Blackman High School had taken control of the tournament early, widened the gap relentlessly, and left no doubt who the standard was in the newly formed region.
The numbers were definitive: 177.0 team points, a 38.5-point margin of victory, and nine qualifiers for the Section 3 Championship — more than any other program in the field. But the way Blackman did it told the real story.
They didn’t survive matches.
They ended them.
From the opening rounds forward, Blackman wrestlers hunted bonus points with a purpose, piling up 16 pins in just over 30 minutes of total mat time, the most falls — and the fastest combined pin time — of any team in the tournament. In a format where one match can swing momentum, Blackman refused to let matches linger long enough for doubt to creep in.
While other teams battled through decisions, Blackman finished.
That mindset showed itself across the lineup. At 120 pounds, Payton Holzhei set the tone, pinning her way through the bracket and into a regional title. At 138, Ali Bryant wrestled with the calm of someone who understood the moment, closing her championship run with authority. At 152, Kinzley Johnson delivered one of the defining moments of the night, recording the second-fastest pin of the entire tournament at just 27 seconds before cruising to a regional championship. And at 185, Jonna Patterson turned inevitability into reality, ending her night with a pair of emphatic falls to secure Blackman’s fourth individual title.
Three of those champions — Bryant, Johnson, and Patterson — were seniors. In a tournament where pressure mounted with every round, their composure anchored the lineup. They didn’t need to say much. They let the scoreboard speak.
But this championship wasn’t built solely at the top of the podium.
It was built in the middle rounds, in consolation brackets, and in matches that don’t always draw the loudest cheers but decide team trophies. Joy Younan’s run to the finals at 100 pounds, Marian Saleb’s tiebreaker semifinal victory at 126, and Skye Hancock’s surge to a runner-up finish at 145 kept Blackman steadily scoring when the tournament threatened to tighten.
And when adversity hit, Blackman answered.
Marena Saleb and Brooklyn Shacklett both rebounded from early losses to fight their way back onto the podium, with Shacklett producing the largest seed-to-placement jump of any wrestler in the tournament. In a field this deep, those recoveries mattered as much as any championship bout.
By the time the final matches concluded, Blackman had not only won Region 6 — they had defined it. First place out of 22 schools. The widest margin of victory in the room. The most wrestlers moving on.
Now, the focus shifts.
Nine Blackman wrestlers advance to the Section 3 Championship, the final checkpoint before the TSSAA State Championships on February 20 in Franklin. The field will narrow. The margins will thin. The spotlight will grow harsher.
But if the first year of this new postseason era taught anything, it’s this:
When the landscape changed and certainty disappeared, Blackman didn’t wait to be told who they were.
They showed everyone.