A winner’s journey: Lewisville wrestler’s SC state championship isn’t the whole story.

Andrue Shipman won an S.C. Class A/AA individual wrestling state title in February. Landing that medal represents accomplishments beyond the wrestling mat.

Andrew’s journey to a title in his senior year -- and now into college -- is a saga of determination amid some tough challenges.

Just nine months before winning the title, the Lewisville senior dislocated 2 vertebrae in his spine while playing football in the spring.

“I jumped up to catch a pass and I got hit in the back,” , said Shipman, who is more frequently called ‘Drue.’ “When I hit the ground, both the L4 and L5 popped out of place. I just kind of laid there for a little bit.”

The injury sidelined Shipman for most of the summer, which further complicated things.

Shipman, 5-foot-10, 152 pounds, was a two-sport athlete -- football and wrestling.

The time he spent recovering kept him from being conditioned when summer football practice started.

“It was hard because they told me I couldn’t do sports for a while,” Shipman said. “So it really limited me to just sitting around the house, doing nothing. Once we got back into doing sports, I was excited, but I wasn’t in shape and stuff like that, so it was hard in the beginning.”

Shipman, who played safety and wide receiver for the Lions, helped lead the team to a 11-2 record and a state quarterfinals appearance this past season. However, midway through that playoff run, Shipman got news that put his high school wrestling plans in jeopardy.

Shipman attends and played football for Lewisville High School, but the school didn’t always have a wrestling team. So Shipman wrestled at nearby Chester High School for three years.

Every year, the athletic directors of Chester’s region would vote whether Shipman could wrestle for the Cyclones. He had gotten ‘yes’ votes in the past. This time he got a ‘no.’

“My coach texted my mom and he told me that they wouldn’t let me come back,” Shipman said. “And it was hard because I didn’t want to believe it. It was difficult because that’s where I was the past three years and that’s where I wanted to go back to. And when they told me no, it kind of hurt a little bit.”

Shipman was in a bind.

Wrestling teams typically start their practices in November. It was already November, and Shipman wasn’t part of a team.

However, his coaches and football teammates banded together. No matter what, they were going to give Shipman one last season.

“We wanted to make sure that Drue had his senior year,” said Leon Boulware, Lewisville’s head football coach, who also took responsibilities coaching Lewisville’s wrestling team. “There was no way we would have not allowed that to happen. We wanted to make sure that he got what he needed, knowing that he had the possibility of winning the state championship.”

Lewisville quickly assembled a wrestling team of football players who had never participated in the sport. As the senior and the most-experienced member on the team, Shipman took on a unique role as player-coach.

“It was kind of difficult to balance them both,” Shipman said. “I would try to laugh and cut up with them and then, ‘Alright, we got to do this and this.’ It was kind of difficult to go from joking around to like, ‘Alright, we got to do this now’ and stuff like that. But it wasn’t that bad after the season went on.”

Lewisville’s first wrestling team in over a decade was successful.

The team entered the Class A/AA State Duals as the No. 11 seed and upset No. 6 High Point Academy (SC) in the first round. The team also sent Shipman, his younger brother Ethan, and Denari Garcia to the Class A/AA individual state tournament and finished 11th in points out of 29 teams.

Drue now plans to continue his wrestling career at Coker University in Hartsville, S.C. But this season was unlike any other for Drue.

“It’s been good in my opinion,” Drue said. “I learned a lot from different guys, wrestling different people. Being at Chester, it was great. It was probably some of the best friends I’ve ever had coming from that team.

“Even at Lewisville, all the kids that Lewisville wrestled, I knew them. I went to Lewisville the whole time, so I knew a bunch of kids over there, and then some of my best friends were at Chester. So I made a lot of memories doing both and playing for both teams.”