As someone who moved to Chapel Hill after graduating from UNC-Pembroke in 1996, Ragsdale sustained himself on Sal's Pizza on Homestead Road while handling his first full-time job as a construction worker. Now, over a decade later, Ragsdale's biggest building job to date reached new heights before Christmas.

It's the one that he's working with the Union Pines High wrestling team.

Despite having no wrestlers qualify for the finals, Union Pines captured the team championship of the 14th annual Tiger Holiday Classic, finishing with 180.5 points. The two-day event took place at Chapel Hill High School. Rock Hill (S.C.) finished runner-up for the second consecutive year with 168 points.

"It's an honor to win this tournament," said Ragsdale. "We were lucky to place so many kids on the first day. We don't have a superstar on this team, we just have 14 really tough kids. This tournament is run really well, so I hope it helps us win the state championship, which is our main goal."

East Chapel Hill finished highest among Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School district teams, with 52 points, its best-ever showing in the event. Chapel Hill, with the only local grappler who reached Wednesday's finals, finished with 42 points.

Despite a muscled strained late in Tuesday's opening rounds, Chapel Hill High's Max Redfoot scored a pin and won two decisions to advance to the finals at 160, where he lost to Stout Watson of Forsyth Country Day 15-2.

Fighting his way back in consolation matches, East Chapel Hill junior Sam Nahins finished 5th at 112 after pinning John Sparks of Morrisville Green Hope.

Orange High, coached by former UNC All-Conference grappler Bobby Shriner, took fifth place. OHS senior Nicholas Shriner finished second at 171, dropping a 17-1 technical fall to Greenville Rose's Branden Lietz in the final. Chris Intehar finished third at 189 while Chris Johnson came in second at 130.

Meanwhile, Union Pines, a Cameron school that finished 27th in 2007, placed nine wrestlers in the top five of their respective weight classes. For Ragsdale to bring the Vikings to the top of a 26-team, four-state tournament is a far cry from where he found the program in Winter 2002, when Union Pines wrestling consisted of exactly six grapplers. Their total wins from the prior year: zero.

"We were near obscurity back then," said Ragsdale, who arrived in Cameron after serving as an assistant coach at Scotland County. "We started off at the bottom. But we had great support from our coaching staff and the parents."

Fortunately for Union Pines' administrators, Ragsdale knew a thing or two about perseverance. His first job out of college involved working in construction. In the meantime, he lived with an old female college classmate and her three sisters inside a house on Smith Level Road -- which had one bathroom.

"That's when I learned how to get up at 5 a.m.," said Ragsdale.

In no time, Ragsdale established the Copperhead Wrestling Club, where many middle school students learned the fundamentals of grappling. Union Pines now lists 22 wrestlers on its roster and went 26-10 in 2009. Competing in the 3-A Cape Fear Valley Conference, the Vikings are currently 13-1.

This year's 26-team field was down from the Holiday Classic's usual standards, for a variety of reasons, mostly the economy and weather. Ten teams from West Virginia, Maryland and Virginia were forced to pull out of the event because of last week's blizzard in the northeast, according to Chapel Hill wrestling coach Wilson Diaz.

The reduced participation didn't limit the full schedule of activities over the course of two days, which included a clinic on Tuesday from former Chapel Hill High state champion Corey Mock (the first four-time, NCHSAA 4-A state champion in North Carolina history), Nick Gregoris (now at the University of Missouri) and Jared Campbell (a 2003 All-American).

As for Chapel Hill, the Tigers are learning to live without Mock and Gregoris. Diaz now has a roster than includes 15 wrestlers who are freshmen or sophomores, and not one senior. After inching out a victory over East Chapel Hill last week, the Tigers are now 4-2 in their dual-team schedule. Exactly what lies ahead remains a mystery.

Now a 3-A team, Chapel Hill will compete in the brand new Carolina-Six Conference, featuring two-time state champion Orange as a league rival for the first time since 2000.

"It's all new this year," said Diaz. "All of our freshmen and sophomores are doing great things. We have a two-year plan right now. We want to compete, but we're looking down the road a ways."