GALION – Work your stuff. Take your shots. Don’t be scared.
That was Nick Allerding’s message to his Clear Fork Colts as they took a slim lead into the final round of the Mid-Ohio Athletic Conference wrestling tournament.
After Saturday, maybe that should be their mantra.
Led by weight class winners Peyton Hoskins and Luke Schlosser, the Colts scored 241 points to hold off defending champion Ontario (236) and host Galion (222) in the eight-team field for their second conference crown in three years.
“(Coach) said to go out there and work on what we’ve been working on,” said Hoskins, the 126-pound champ. ”Be on our offense, not on defense. But we’ve worked so hard this year on defense we know that even if we get shot on, we can defend it.”
The tourney more than lived up to billing.
Ontario had been on a roll in recent weeks, winning the 23-team Sally George Invitational at Marion Pleasant and sweeping duals with Clear Fork and Galion on their rivals’ home mats. They also came into the MOAC meet boasting a two-time league champ and projected state champ in Jacob Ohl, one of the top freshman 106-pounders in the state in Ohl’s younger brother Aiden and the newly-christened Sally George MVP in Mason Turnbaugh.
Then there’s Galion, which got a lot of love in the Division II state rankings early in the season, thanks to a heralded freshman in Gradey Harding (120) at one end of the lineup and two state tourney-tested juniors in Landon Campbell (215) and Alex Griffith (285) anchoring the other end of the attack.
But right there all along, lurking on the periphery, was Clear Fork with its bunch of workaholics.
Galion (four) and Ontario (three) had more champs Saturday than Clear Fork (two) and Ontario matched Clear Fork’s total of six finalists. But where the Colts excelled was placing someone in the top six in all one of the 14 weight classes.
They also had a lot of kids step up to offset the absence of regular 138-pounder Champ DeLancy and the departure during Saturday’s action of returning champ Fred Proto. He tried to go after injuring a knee in practice during the week, but ultimately had to forfeit his last two matches at 190.
“There was belief,” Allerding said. “I thought if we got the lineup I anticipated that we would have a shot. You control what you can control, so we looked internally and tried to put together the best lineup we could and get the guys wrestling the best they can, and then we let the chips fall where they may.
“I didn’t know if we were going to hang on, but it was a lot of fun.”
Ontario’s Dylan Floyd (175) and Bralen Boone (190) won titles to make things a little tense for Clear Fork at the end, but the work done all day by the Colts held up.
Work like the second-seeded Hoskins digging out of a big hole early in his title match. He eventually pulled even at 5-5 and then scored three back points with 23 seconds left for an 8-5 win over Marion Harding’s No. 1 seed David Backus.
Work like Schlosser’s 59-second pin in his finale. Yes, he was the top seed, but to overpower Marion Pleasant’s Sam Mentzer was somewhat surprising given that Schlosser had lost to him 13-8 in his second match of the season.
“That (loss) really fueled me in practice,” Schlosser said. “This time I wrestled. I was beating him and quit in the match where I lost to him. This time I kept my foot on the gas pedal.”
It helped taking his coach’s pep talk to the team to heart.
“He said ‘take care of business,’” Schlosser said. “It’s amazing. Nobody even thought we’d be in the top three. But we knew all week we could win this. We wrestled all of these teams in duals and kept up with them and beat most of them in tournaments. We also beat Ashland (one of the top teams in north central Ohio) in a dual by over 20 points.”
Clear Fork’s two third-place finishers – Colton Wenger (106) and Damon Hoskins (120), Peyton’s brother – won their final matches before Peyton rallied for his big win over Backus.
“I saw (Backus) start slowing down and losing momentum,” he said. “I felt him get tired, so I started ramping it up. I’ve put in work all season. My stamina’s good and my conditioning is good. I knew I had better conditioning than him, so I started pushing the pace.”
Taking runner-up honors for Clear Fork were Jaxon Swank (126), Cody Jackson (150), Kaiden Schlosser (165), Luke’s cousin; and Eric Hicks (285). Finishing fourth were Hezekiah Molina (113), Blake Schlosser (157), Luke’s brother; and Proto, while fifth went to Landon Schlosser (144), another of Luke’s cousins, and Ross Wine (215).
The most anticipated match of the tournament ended in heartbreak. The 120 finals marked the fifth time that Jacob Ohl and Harding have met this season in a showdown of two of the top lightweights in Ohio.
Ohl won the first four meetings and was leading 4-3 in the second period Saturday when his left knee gave out. He had already taken some injury time earlier in the period when he hurt his ribs and there seemed to be some question then if he would continue. But there was no bouncing back when he hurt his knee. He had to be carried from the mat and headed to the hospital for X-rays with his post-season in serious doubt.
Winning by injury default was not exactly the way Harding wanted to win an MOAC title, especially since he and Ohl are good friends.
“I don’t know for sure what happened.” he said. “It’s hard, a weird situation.”
Harding was having a good match when it came to an unfortunate halt. After falling behind 3-0, he earned an escape and then spun around Ohl for a match-tying takedown. Ohl went back on top on an escape, but Harding was trying to finish a takedown and take the lead when Ohl’s knee gave out.
“We’re both really hard workers and there were a lot of positives to come out of the match for me,” Harding said. “I’ve just kept working hard (after their first four meetings didn’t go his way.) There’s nothing else you can do.”
This was just Ohl’s second loss of the season and both have been by injury default. He didn’t lose last season until the Division II state finals.
While he was denied his third MOAC title, his younger brother had little trouble winning his first, with Aiden posting a 9-0 win over Highland’s Konner Blaney.
After his shutout, you’d think Ohl would be happy with his defense, but no.
“I’m probably happiest with my offense,” he said. “My defense wasn’t as good. A good offense makes a good defense. I’ve just got to work on my defense a little more.”
He’ll know exactly when it’s up to the standards he’s set for himself.
“When I can start stopping (Jacob’s) attacks (in practice), that’s when I’ll know it’s good,” he said. “But it hasn’t happened yet.”
Ontario went 3-3 in championship matches, with Jacob Ohl, Turnbaugh (138) and Grason Bias (215) settling for runner-up honors. Turnbaugh fell 6-2 to impressive Highland freshman Cael Gilmore, son of Scots’ coach Adam Gilmore and grandson of former Madison star Tim Gilmore. Bias lost by pin (3:38) to Galion’s three-time MOAC champ Landon Campbell.
When they met a week earlier, Bias did a pretty good job of hanging in before falling 9-1. But with each passing week, Campbell gets closer to his 2022 state medalist form after missing a large chunk of this season with an hyperextended elbow.
“I’m staying after practice every day with (Brodyn) Butcher, trying to get all of the fatigue out,” said Campbell, ranked fourth in the state. “I didn’t get fatigued in this match. Now that it’s close to the end of the season, I just need to work more on situational stuff.
“I feel like, strength-wise, I’m at about 95 percent. I’m definitely better than a week ago.”
Campbell appreciated the support from his brother Carson, who made it to the tournament after winning a Knox-Morrow Athletic Conference title Saturday afternoon as a Northmor freshman.
“It’s really nice that we were both able to win titles,” Landon said. “I couldn’t be the brother not to win, so I had to try and one-up him.”
If Landon wins a fourth MOAC title next year, those are family bragging rights that might be hard to surpass.
“If I get four, I’ll be Galion’s first four-time MOAC champ,” he said, “so that’s been a goal of mine since I was a freshman.”
Galion went 4-0 in championship bouts Saturday. The second-seeded Butcher scored an 11-2 decision over Pleasant’s Brandon Mulvaine at 157 and heavyweight Alex Griffith repeated with a 3:50 pin over the aforementioned Hicks.
Butcher didn’t look like a No. 2 seed in dominating his match.
“Seeding doesn’t really matter,” he said. “It’s how you wrestle. If you wrestle good, feel good, no matter where you’re seeded, if you’re determined to win, you can win.
“I had to keep my hips back so (Mulvaine) couldn’t roll me. He’s a funky dude. I figured that out quick. He kept trying to grab my arms and roll me over, but I just stuck to the basics. Stay strong, stay sturdy.”
