This was a totally different Dylan Fairchild.

Coming out of the 2019 West Forsyth football season, Fairchild, a junior, was now entering his third wrestling campaign a tad over the weight limit of 285 pounds. When head coach Evan Goff would wrestle with Fairchild in practice, he found himself dealing with a much stronger and technically sound athlete.

It didn't take long for Goff to realize Fairchild was going to be a menace for the rest of the state to deal with during this past season.

As a freshman, Fairchild was in the 230-to-240-pound weight range, and didn’t have a complete wrestling skill set. His weight increased to the 250-to-260 range the following year. As a junior, he bulked up to 290 before cutting to the maximum weight allowed.

Fairchild was now the complete package on the mat.

“You’re talking about a grown man now,” Goff said. “Completely maxed out in the heavyweight category, but it wasn’t baby weight anymore. This joker was a monster. I could tell the first couple of times in the season, when I wrestled with him, that it was nothing like the kid I wrestled the previous two years. He was so tough to deal with.”

Fairchild is better known as Rivals' 12th-rated offensive guard, one who committed to Georgia on May 30. An excellent football player, Fairchild is just as elite as a wrestler.

Goff’s early realization that Fairchild would be hard to handle proved true. In January, at the Hook ‘Em Holiday Clash in Suwanee, Fairchild met Chattooga’s Luis Medina in the heavyweight division's finals. Medina, who signed to play football at Troy in this year's class, would go on to win this year's Class 2A state championship.

Against Fairchild, it would be a different story. Fairchild took Medina down in the first period, something Goff recalled him doing to almost everyone this past season.

“I think it just proved to Dylan that it wasn’t just a fluke,” Goff said. “He got in some good positions, took a nice shot, ended up pinning this guy in the first period. I think that was the turning point confidence wise, where he said, ‘You know what, it’s not just that I’m wrestling crappy guys. I’m that good now.’ He realized he was winning a lot; he didn’t lose all last year.”

Fairchild went a perfect 47-0 as a junior en route to an individual state title in Class 8A. In the state championship, Fairchild pinned Cherokee’s Todd Parks in 32 seconds. He was named the Forsyth County News’ wrestler of the year.

“It's not done until it's done,” Fairchild told the Forsyth County News. “My finals match could have been all three periods. I was still kind of on edge because I always want to keep a sharp edge and make sure I'm not going to say, ‘Oh, this is easy,’ and then someone catch me off guard. I just kind of went out there with the same tempo, with every single match. It's just a regular wrestling match, you know? I just went out there with the same mindset every time.”

What separates Fairchild as a wrestler, Goff said, is how quick and in control of his body he is at his size. As Fairchild kept growing and filling out his frame, the agility and speed kept up. Helping in that department is the fact that Fairchild was an accomplished youth wrestler long before he got to high school, having won multiple state titles before high school.

However, Goff said it’s sometimes harder to project the bigger kids before they compete on the high school level, since there just aren't that many on the youth stage. But for Fairchild, the positive evaluation didn't take long to determine. While it took time to add both the needed skills and weight, there was always a feeling that Fairchild would be successful as a wrestler based on his potential and drive.

“Because he started at such a young age, he has a lot of leg attacks. He’s very versatile and agile on his feet,” Goff said. “He wrestles a lot like a lighter guy. He catches a lot of guys off guard. A lot of times, those bigger boys don’t have time in those positions to practice a lot. Guys don’t take shots on them so they don’t get good at takedown defense.”

This is where Fairchild’s expertise as a wrestler should come in handy as an offensive lineman in college.

Goff noted that the football weight training program helped Fairchild add the needed weight to his frame to prepare him for his upcoming sophomore and junior seasons. The skills learned as a wrestler can translate to the trenches.

Fairchild has the quickness to move with edge rushers, the bend to win leverage, and the power to move defenders backward. Those particular traits are seamless in both football and wrestling.

“The sport teaches you to be competitive, to line up, square off against another man, go into a fight and battle,” Goff said. “There’s nobody else to blame it on with nobody else to help you. That side of the sport is so instrumental for kids, especially for football players. When they get in the trenches, it’s them vs. another guy in front of them, and it’s getting off that block or getting a block.

“Then the leverage and body control, the core strength, the explosiveness, the power, learning to use his hands and use momentum and force and pressure—you just understand your body and position so much better. His footwork improved dramatically. Usually the tall guys like that, they grow so fast, and their feet have trouble catching up with their body. He just maintained his agility level.”

Goff took over the West Forsyth wrestling program when Fairchild was a rising ninth-grader. The two have grown close over the past four years, with Goff saying Fairchild has become almost like a child of his. Seeing his success as a football player and a wrestler has been a thrill to watch.

So what was his reaction when Fairchild committed to play football at Georgia?

“I got my masters at Georgia, my brother got his law school degree at Georgia, my other brother graduated from Georgia, and my momma got her degree from Georgia,” Goff said. “We’re an entire family of Dawgs, and the fact he chose UGA was just special. We’re die-hards.”