Carter Brown will head to Fargo next month on a pretty good winning streak.
The senior-to-be at Lafayette High School in Wildwood went 19-0 at the Junior National Duals held June 16 to 20 in Milwaukee.
Brown went 10-0 in Greco-Roman and 9-0 in freestyle while competing for Team Missouri, which took second in the Blue/Red Bracket of the freestyle team competition. The Missouri Greco team took fifth place.
The North Carolina State commit said he prefers the Greco-Roman style of grappling in the summer. A 215-pounder, Brown can use his upper body strength to dominate.
He posted tech falls and pins en route to his 10-0 record.
Brown had pins of 8 seconds over Brandon Moreno from Team Kansas Gold and in 7 seconds versus Brayden Calmes of Team Wyoming Black.
He had tech fall wins over wrestlers from Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee, Iowa, Florida, Oklahoma, California and North Carolina.
In freestyle, he was just as dominant.
One match that stands out for him was against Oregon. Team Missouri needed wins from Brown and Zyan Knollmeyer, who was at 285 pounds.
Both came through with falls.
“It was really close up til the end, and we needed to win, and we both did, so that was really cool,” Brown said. “It is always a little nerve-racking because I feel like I don’t want to let the team down. But I just go out there and know what I have to do.”
Five of Brown’s nine wins in freestyle were by pins, taking down Eli Anderson of Washington in 1:20; Xerxes Ellison of Alabama in 12 seconds; Elijah Dilworth from Idaho in 44 seconds; Carson Langford from Oregon at 3:13 and Kellen Fellure from Indiana in 26 seconds.
Three of his four tech falls were 10-0 wins — the exception was 13-2.
“I just always have the mindset to try to get as many points for my team,” Brown said. “These dual tournaments aren’t just an individual thing; I try to win for myself, but also try to win for my team.”
Brown said the success at the national tournament is a sign that his hard work putting in this summer is paying off.
“I think the summer is very important, like most of the offseason wrestling in the summer is at a national level,” he said. “So it really elevates my wrestling and it helps … I feel like my weaknesses are wrestling against some more high-level wrestlers, so it helps me get ready for the high school season as well.”
He is still a few months away from starting his senior season for the Lancers.
He won his second straight championship last season, going 50-2 and winning the Class 4 title against North Kansas City’s Kobe Rhymes. The only two losses of the season for Brown came at the Walsh Jesuit Ironman Tournament in Ohio.
Brown is the second multiple-time champion for Lafayette, joining Scott Redford, who went back-to-back in 1985 and 1986.
“Both titles have meant a lot to me, but I think just getting a third title would mean even more, just because I would be the first at Lafayette to ever do that for wrestling,” he said.
Heading into his senior year, the Lancer standout has pledged to wrestle for the North Carolina State Wolfpack, which was announced in May. He said he narrowed down his choices to NC State and Missouri.
NC State coach Pat Popolizio will have 14 freshmen on the 2026-27 season, a lot in the transfer-portal era of roster building. He’s won 7 ACC titles in his 15 years at the helm.
“I really enjoyed everything, wrestling aside,” Brown said of the Raleigh school. “I really enjoyed the campus. I think they have a great coaching staff and they have a really good history of producing heavyweight national champions. So, I think that’s just where I would be the best fit. That was a really, really tough decision for me, because I always really liked Mizzou, and it’s close. I know a lot of people who go there, a lot of kids from Lafayette just go to school at Missouri. It was tough to kind of put those things aside and just look straight at like, the details of where I should go for myself.”
