Ohio State wrestling head coach Tom Ryan raises his fist after sophomore Gavin Hoffmann won his match during the Ohio State-Rutgers matchup on Jan. 24. Ohio State won 19-14. Credit: Mackenzie Shanklin | Photo Editor
Throughout a college wrestling season, the sport reminds its athletes of the physicality needed to compete at a high level.
College wrestlers need to be at peak condition to sustain the brutality of a seven-minute match, especially at a program like Ohio State who competes in a Big Ten Conference that features nine ranked teams.
After a lengthy offseason that lasted eight months, Ohio State wrestlers have fought to remain in shape. Still, the team’s most significant weakness this season has been its conditioning, which proves true in its inability to win close matches.
In a 28-12 loss to Penn State in the regular-season finale, Ohio State redshirt senior Elijah Cleary and redshirt juniors Kaleb Romero and Tate Orndorff dropped matches in the closing seconds.
“As bad as the final score was, we can flip a lot of those matches,” Ohio State head coach Tom Ryan said. “They all came down to one takedown, and we can overturn those.”
Losing by close margins did not start against Penn State. The Buckeyes have struggled all season with claiming highly contested matches and leaving points on the mat against their competition.
Ohio State wrestlers have lost 38 individual matches across all weight classes, with 18 resulting in final scores within two points or less of their opponents.
Ryan noticed the beginning of the trend when the team faced Illinois in their season-opening dual meet. The Buckeyes dropped six matches to the Illini, losing six by two points or less.
Ryan said the close losses indicated the team’s lack of conditioning and pointed to the pandemic’s significant role in each wrestler’s ability to train in the offseason.
“The people that were in quarantine, this six- or seven-month period, that were in a good setting to improve look a lot better than those that weren’t,” Ryan said.
Despite some Ohio State wrestlers competing well, Ryan called his team’s showing against Illinois a collective failure.
“That was one of the worst performances in a dual meet from an Ohio State team that I have seen in quite a while,” Ryan said.
After the loss, Romero said the team adopted the word “compete” as a mantra to help them bounce back from the loss and develop greater consistency.
“We were all about competing, doing the same routine, and coming to practice every day to fight hard, compete and wrestle as hard as we can,” Romero said.
For a time, the mantra worked, and the Buckeyes would claim four consecutive wins against Wisconsin, Rutgers, Michigan State and Maryland. However, Ohio State would see its weakness become noticeable again when it lost three of its final four dual meets of the season.
In their second tri-meet of the year, the Buckeyes lost in blowout fashion to Iowa before defeating Purdue. Ohio State’s last two dual meets were a heartbreaking loss to Michigan and a significant loss to Penn State.
Against Iowa, Ohio State struggled against the star-studded Hawkeye roster and could not keep many matches close. Only a top-five matchup at 174 pounds between Romero and No. 1 Iowa redshirt senior Michael Kemerer resulted in a narrow finish, a 3-1 decision in favor of Kemerer.
Ohio State defeated Purdue 23-12, but the win was not without a few bumps along the way. The Buckeyes dropped four matches against the Boilermakers, with three coming by two points or less.
In the dual meet with the Wolverines, much stayed the same, but the Buckeyes paid the price this time as Michigan edged Ohio State 18-16.
“We had several chances to win up in Michigan,” Ryan said. “We had several opportunities in matches that we had to execute late, and we didn’t.”
At 133 pounds, Ohio State sophomore Jordan Decatur lost 6-4 to Michigan redshirt junior Jack Medley in a match he controlled until the final moments.
Another missed opportunity was at 157 pounds between Cleary and Michigan redshirt sophomore Will Lewan in a match that lasted much longer than the guaranteed seven minutes. The two wrestlers outlasted two sudden victories and multiple 30-second rounds.
Cleary’s desperate attempts to bring down Lewan proved unsuccessful in the match’s closing moments, and the Michigan wrestler won by riding time. In turn, the Wolverines would also take the dual meet by way of Lewan’s three-point victory.
In the final dual meet of the season, Penn State convincingly defeated Ohio State, yet the Buckeyes kept the match close through the first six matches.
After the intermission, 165-pound Ohio State redshirt junior Ethan Smith pinned Penn State redshirt freshman Joe Lee and brought the match to a 12-12 tie. The Covelli Center’s limited capacity erupted and momentum seemed to favor the Buckeyes.
But the Nittany Lions quickly took the energy away by winning the final four matches of the night en route to a runaway victory.
Ryan said he expects his team to use the missed opportunities as fuel for their training before the Big Ten Championships.
“I expect the team to be really hard on themselves, not down on themselves, but hard on themselves,” Ryan said.
The Buckeyes already completed a week of strenuous practice, and the team will have until March 6 to continue training for the two-day tournament.
As for the team’s focus, the Buckeyes can only hope to improve by correcting past mistakes.
“Tomorrow is a new day, and we can’t do anything about past performances,” Ryan said. “We need to make sure for our next ones we are more prepared.”
