Career Highlights
1990 – 125-pound NCHSAA 4A State champion, 4A Regional champion. 35-6 record. Defeated three Regional champions to win the State Championship.
1991 – 130-pounds NCHSAA 4A State Runner-Up
Scholarship to Campbell University
Marrio McCorkle
Lessons Learned.
Wresting gave Mario McCorkle more than pins and wins.
Mario McCorkle’s first choice was basketball. He was a determined, 88-pound seventh-grader when he tried out for Mount Holly Middle School. “But I got cut from the team,” he says, “and they were having wrestling tryouts the same day, so I went downstairs and wrestled one of their top guys and beat him. So I figured, Ok, I guess I want to be a wrestler.”
It worked well. McCorkle won several state and regional high school championships and a college scholarship. And, now, a place in the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.
When his high school coach and Hall official Doug Smith notified him, McCorkle says, “I thought it was a prank, and he says, ‘No, get yourself ready for the third weekend in August.’ And I instantly called my mom and told her thank you, thank you for being a great mom because if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be getting any of these accolades.”
Wrestling taught McCorkle a few things. He learned that excelling in the classroom is essential. He learned some people are less fortunate than others. He learned that hard work has rewards.
And, later, he learned that each moment on this earth is a precious gift.
The first lesson was that school wrestling is not the WWE.
“I used to wrestle with friends, and I had no idea what moves you could and couldn’t do. Like, I’d seen wrestling on TV, and this was a lot different,” he says. “There’s a lot of things happening in those few minutes, and you get tired!”
He made the team, and quickly found that athletics goes beyond what happens on match day. “We had to get in shape and had to run so many miles a week,” he says. “We had a guy named Tony who used to wrestle for East Gaston, and he’d help with the program. We had to run around the auditorium, we had to change our eating habits so you wouldn’t cramp while you were out there, we’d get a Snickers bar for quick energy before a match … just some things they taught us.”
In one match, he says, he recorded one of the fastest pins ever: seven seconds.
In ninth grade, McCorkle was up to 112 pounds. He lost one match. “A guy named Kirkpatrick was the only one who beat me during the year, and I beat him back in the championship,” he says. The Gaston County Middle School Championships. I remember he was one of the toughest guys, but I pinned him in the second period.”
High school is different from junior high. Athletes are bigger, stronger. Workouts are tougher, longer. Expectations are greater.
“Tenth grade was the year I wanted to quit,” McCorkle says. “Me and my teammate, we just got tired of running. We had to run stairwells, had to run hills, had to run and spit with gum, and we decided we were going to take our shoes and go to Coach Smith and say we quit. And he made us run until we thought we’d pass out. But I thank him for it, because he made us feel gifted. I feel like God gave me and my teammate a gift.”
McCorkle withdrew from post-season events that year because of non-wrestling related illness, but he learned a lesson in gratitude. “Coach Smith was almost like a father figure. He would buy some people wrestling shoes, because some people couldn’t afford them,” he says.
McCorkle won his first state and regional championships as a junior.
“It was the State 4A Championships, and the matches were pretty intense. We were wrestling for the team title, as well as individual, and East Gaston for years had been known as one of the dominant programs,” he says. “Coach Smith really put together a great program. A lot of us contributed to what I call teammanship.
“And Coach Smith, he cared about your grades. If your grades were low, you were running some extra something.”
McCorkle lost in the championship round of the state tournament his senior year. He remembers the atmosphere in the arena, more than the match. “You could tell when East Gaston came into the arena. There was a quote back then – “Momma, there goes that man!” – and that’s how they looked at East Gaston when we walked in. Coach Smith built a great program.”
He applied to UNC-Chapel Hill, Fayetteville State and Campbell University. He and a teammate visited Fayetteville and Campbell, “and Campbell took us out, and bought us steaks… and we came up there.”
Though he accepted a scholarship to Campbell, McCorkle says, he later learned his dream school also was interested.
“I remember [East Gaston counselor] Miss [Cindy] Cloninger came up to me and said UNC had called and was going to give me partial scholarship. I remember crying that day, because UNC was where I wanted to go, but we [he and his teammate] both went to Campbell for two years.”
His scholarship was part wrestling, part with the National Guard. And college was a whole new game.
“In high school, you have some quick pins and easy matches, but in college it’s the elite of the elite, and it gives you a chance to actually improve your skills,” he says. “It was great competition.”
McCorkle was in the National Guard three years. He was flown to Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., then to Camp Darby in Italy, where he built tank platforms.
He was on leave, visiting his sister in Mount Holly, when that lesson occurred about each precious moment of life.
He was sitting on the front steps, when the 16-year-old stranger approached with a 25 Beretta. Words happened. The teen hit McCorkle with six bullets – two in his chest, then his shoulder, back, backside and thigh. His lungs collapsed. He was hospitalized six days. “I heard the gun clicking, then he took off running,” McCorkle says. “They called an ambulance, and I remember thanking everyone for praying for me. They wouldn’t let my mom or anyone else come back there [in the ER]. Later, they explained to my mom that part of what saved me was that I was so muscular.
“I thank God every day to be alive. I truly, truly, truly thank God every day.”
McCorkle, 49, lives in Greenville, S.C. now, where he works as a metal fabricator. He says his wrestling career was important away from the mat, too, with friendships made and the moments of ‘teammanship.’
McCorkle’s grandmother had 11 children. “And out of that 11, I have 31 first cousins on my mom’s side and 97 second cousins. I have a huge family,” he says. When that grandmother, Vertie Mae McCorkle, passed away in 2018 at age 100, he says, Coach Smith was at the funeral.
“Being in this Hall of Fame is an honor,” he says. “I have three beautiful children. With the wrestling guys, it was like a brotherhood. We pushed each other to be the best we could be.”