They were a bond of brothers, Velcro’d together by the coached belief that they could whup anyone.

They were right.

The 1990-91 East Gaston High School wrestling team was 20-0 and state champs, an outcome they knew was inevitable from day one.

“Coach (Doug) Smith and Kirk Wells, his assistant, they instilled an attitude in us that we just couldn’t be beat. And we bought into it,” says Paul Combs, a senior that year who wrestled at 125 pounds. “And it just progressed. These were a bunch of young, teachable boys that had great coaches, and every day at practice they didn’t just drill moves and technique, they would drill an attitude of success into our heads. Every day.

“We were as mentally tough as we were physical.”

The Warriors won the North Carolina State 4A Individual Tournament, the Western 4A Regional, the Tri-County 4-A Conference, the Gaston County Tournament and everything during the regular season.  As a team, they remain united in the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

“One of the pleasures of my life was walking into a gym behind these guys and watching everyone’s heads turn and look at them,” says Smith, who coach East Gaston from 1978 to 1992. “It was like, ‘Uh-oh, there they are.’ It was the culture, the winning culture we developed in the 1980s about how to win, and in the ‘90s, they just assumed we would do it again.”

The points margin from those 20 victories was 1,136-203. Everyone helped everyone, to put the best combination on the mat.

“We see so many things in today’s world, political stuff, that tries to divide us among racial lines, ethnic lines, socio-economic lines, and you look at that ’91 team and we had kids of all races, all backgrounds, and we didn’t care about black, we didn’t care about white,” says Cain Beard, who was a 103-pound sophomore. “The only color we cared about was gold. It’s a standard you set.”

Jerry Brooks, a senior who went on to compete for Campbell University, was state champion that year, at 189 pounds. “Coach Smith is a real good guy, a real good coach,” he says. “All the coaches I was able to play sports under, I was very fortunate.”

The team graduated eight starters from the previous year. “We had to fill eight weight classes out of 13, so we weren’t really on some people’s radar,” Smith says, “But this team really came together. We wore out pretty much everybody. It was incredible.”

The Warriors beat Olympic High School 69-0 and Harding High School 78-0. For Combs, the WRAL tournament in Raleigh was the highlight. “It was the biggest tournament of the year. There were probably 40 teams there,” he says. “Rock Hill had won the state eight times in 10 years and they were nationally ranked, and we beat them that year. By a point and a half. I pinned a kid, and Coach Smith looked at me and said, ‘You just won the tournament for us right there. Your points just won the tournament.’”

Today, Smith owns a trophy and awards business, Awards Express, in Charlotte.

It’s been 25 years since that ’91 season.

Combs went from high school to the military and works for Old Dominion Freight Lines.

Brooks lives near Raleigh and owns five franchises of Dickey’s Barbecue Pit.

Beard lives in Stanley and commutes to Rock Hill, S.C. He’s been the wrestling coach at Rock Hill High School for nine years, and his team has won three state championships and been runners-up three times. He was selected to coach in the 2016 SCWCA Best Western North South All-Star Classic last March in North Myrtle Beach.

“That culture that was there in ’91, the winning and doing things the right way, we just all knew everybody was on the same page – everybody knew what our goals were from the get-go,” Beard says. “What I probably hold most dear is that everybody on that team, from the littlest guy to the biggest guy, we held each other to a standard that we were going to go out and perform to the best of our ability, and we knew that the end goal was a state championship.

“Coach Smith always said, take care of our team goals first and anything after that is icing on the cake. And that’s been my coaching philosophy as well, and it’s paid off. We spent so much time together over that four-month period in ’91, that we developed a bond like family. To this day, those guys are my brothers. No matter where we go in life, we have that bond that will never go away.”