The boys knew, back in 2001, that to be successful and reach their goal, they’d have to beat each other up a bit.

“It was vicious. We pushed each other,” says Ben Hart. “It was like a war room in there.”

“Ben was definitely on a bit of a warpath,” says Dusty McKinney. “He was about 130, and I was weighing like 105, and he was about 17 or 18 and I was 13 and he beat the snot out of me every day. I had a choice: Get up and keep trying, or not. But he helped build me.”

“We were just a bunch of crazy East Gaston kids who wanted to win,” says Tripp Rogers. “We beat up on each other all summer long.”

“We were rough on each other,” Hart says.

“I got my butt kicked,” McKinney says.

“We worked hard and stayed by each other,” Rogers says. “We set a goal.”

Their persistence paid off.

The three East Gaston High School wrestlers each became 2001 Class 4A state champion. Hart won at 130 pounds, Rogers at 112 and McKinney at 103, his first of four consecutive titles.

Now, the three are joining the 2025 class in the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

“Winning a state championship was all we ever knew to work for,” Rogers says. “You work to be the best, and that’s what we did. You don’t appreciate it until you get older, how special it is to win a state championship. We pushed and pushed and were blessed enough to reach that ultimate goal.”

Their camaraderie in high school, and in their youth, molded who they became as competitive athletes and as adults.

“I’m proud of those guys,” Hart says. “You come out as a family.”

A look at each wrester’s championship journey:

Ben Hart knew the McKinney family as a child, the boys playing pee-wee football together. “Dusty’s dad was my first coach, then Tripp came in a little later in the middle school scene, and we all grew up together,” he says, “and I’m grateful for Chais (Schenck, a 2024 Hall of Fame inductee). They called us the Four Horsemen.”

Hart started wrestling in seventh grade at Mount Holly Junior High, which then became Mount Holly Middle in 1997. “So I had four years of wrestling. I was the first four-year class,” he says. “I knew from the very beginning that this was my sport.”

He took his junior year off, which influenced his pathway following his senior year state title.

“God had a plan,” he says.

Hart went to UNC Charlotte and was in college when the 9/11 tragedy unfolded. It made him want to serve his country. He joined the Army ROTC and later served two tours of duty in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. During his second deployment to Iraq, he met a gentleman who mentioned Austin, Tex.

“I was an infantry officer in the Army, and I’d been to Georgia and Kansas and Hawaii, and I always wanted to be a cop. I thought that, while I was in college, I’d be a cop in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, but God had a different plan and during my second tour of Iraq, I met someone. God opened a lot of doors, and the bottom line is that I’m a detective in the Austin police department.”

He met his wife while he was at UNCC, and when he was sent to Ranger School at Fort Benning, Ga., he says it “was a long process, being in a long-distance relationship. If she’s sticking with me through this, I thought, then she’s part of God’s plan. I came home, asked her to marry me, and we were shipped to Fort Riley, Kansas.”

Next year will mark his and Chrissy’s 20th anniversary. They have three children: Ashelyn, 17; Rebecca, 14; and Christopher, 12.

“There are some crazy stories about wrestling, but the individuals on the team influenced my life in a positive way. The camaraderie and how tough we were, I think, literally saved my life later,” he says. “In the three deployments, and when I was on the SWAT Gold Team, all of that has led to being able to push through and be mentally touch and resilient. It’s a drive instilled in me by my family and the East Gaston wrestling team. Tripp, Dusty, Dusty’s brother Jeremy, Chais, the parents, I’m fond of my memories with these people.”

Dusty McKinney knew about high-level competition before his freshman year at EG, with junior high Nationals and AAU Grand Nationals in the summers. “I had a couple of good runs and placed in those, but you don’t know what to expect as a freshman,” he says. “I had all the high hopes in the world, but we were also in 4A, the biggest division at the time in North Carolina. We had Chais as an example, and worked as hard as we could.”

He started wrestling to follow his brother, Jeremy, but also had a side sport on the rodeo circuit, with the Junior Southern Rodeo Association and Mid-Atlantic Rodeo Association. “I was not a naturally good wrestler,” he says. “I had more athleticism that I figured out how to use. I just wanted to be like those guys, and that’s what made me want to keep wrestling.”

He won four conference and four regional titles, was twice named Most Outstanding Wrestler at the state tournament, and became the first-ever freshman to win a state title in the 4A classification. McKinney also helped lead EG to a runner-up finish at the state tournament and three consecutive team state titles. In 2004, he was state champion along with teammates Jared Grigg (103), Rob Tate (112) and Justin Sparrow (119).  

As a senior, he won the prestigious Super 32 tournament, NHSCA Pre-Season Nationals and was a national runner-up at the NHSCA Senior Nationals—the highest finish by any North Carolinian in the event’s history.  He was also selected as honorable mention for the Asics All-American Team.

McKinney was voted EG’s Most Outstanding Wrestler in 2001. His overall EG record was 209-12.

He wrestled at George Mason University for a year-and-a-half before joining the Navy in 2006. “I wanted to keep wrestling, and Rob Hermann, the Navy’s Olympic coach, knew me from camps, and I wanted to join the Navy and put myself on a good track for life, serve my country, and catapult me somewhere,” he says.

As a member of the All-Navy team, he earned All-American honors at the University Nationals. In the Navy, he traveled the world, supporting global operations in intelligence and cryptologic warfare roles.

After wrestling, McKinney found another challenge: American Ninja Warrior, and despite being one of the shortest competitors, at 5-foot-3, he was a regional champion, two-time national qualifier and competed on Team Ninja Warrior and an All-Star episode. His athleticism and obstacle skills led him to become an official tester for the show’s courses, he says. He also was the shortest person ever to complete Stage One at Mount Midoriyama.

In 2012, he was commissioned as an Ensign in the Navy, finished his degree and, through a mutual friend, met his wife, Tish. After six deployments, he’s now stationed in Fort Gordon, Ga. The couple has two sons, Mason, 13, and Lynden, 9.

He credits his success to his parents, his brother “for showing the meaning of hard work and perseverance,” and his wife, who he says continues to push him “to excellence as a father, husband, professional and man of faith.”

Tripp Rogers says his family moved from Gastonia to Mount Holly specifically to let him wrestle for East Gaston. He knew McKinney from AAU and says his high school goal was, simply, a state championship.

“We wanted to be the best. Everyone wanted to be state champ. We never thought anything different,” he says.  “Now I get to tell my kids they can see Daddy’s medal when they visit Grandma’s house.”

Rogers’ first sports ambition was to play basketball. “I got picked on for being short,” he says.

He started wrestling in seventh grade with AAU and went 0-2. In eighth-grade, he says, he won a few matches and was hooked. In ninth grade, he made the State Tournament but went 0-2. “And I said this will never, ever happen again. So I completely committed to wrestling, and won a state championship as a sophomore in 2001.”

His state championship that year was his 100th career win. He finished with 199.

“But I’ve won 300 as a coach,” he says.

Rogers coaches at Hough High School in Cornelius, where he’s been for 15 years.

Back in 10th grade, he says, he and his teammates worked every day after school, sometimes up to three hours. “Sprints, wrestling, sprints, conditioning,” he says.

He wrestled at UNC Greensboro four years, went to grad school, coached, and took night classes at Belmont Abbey. “And my fiancé loved me enough to put up with my schedule,” he says.

He and Meredith have two boys, Wilks and Hayes. A baby girl is on the way.