Glenville State repeats as MEC wrestling champs

GLENVILLE — Fifth-year Glenville State University head wrestling coach Dylan Cottrell is a realist and resting on one’s laurels is something he doesn’t plan on letting his Pioneers do.

Last weekend, the G-men had a grappler in all 10 finals weight classes and captured six titles en route to defending their Mountain East Conference team championship.

Now, the Gilmer County based second-ranked NCAA D2 program is set to clash Saturday with host and No. 23 Indianapolis as well as Kentucky Wesleyan and Montevallo at the Greyhound Duals inside Nicoson Hall.

“I mean it’s good,” Cottrell said of getting MEC crowns from Colton Drousias (125), Guy DeLeonardis (157), Wiley Houser (165), Hayden Pummel (174), 197-pounder Nick Johnson and heavyweight Isaiha Casto. “We went in a little banged up and got a lot more banged up during it, which that part kind of sucks. Other than that I feel like we are wrestling really good right now. Some of our guys who during the start of the year who were middle of the pack guys are starting to really wrestle well at the end of the year. That’s kind of what we need. We need them to keep moving along in the right direction and then our guys who are ranked really high in the country they have to continue to wrestle as a high level, but I thought the weekend went really well.

“We wrestled pretty well and had some upsets in the tournament. We had some guys get upset, but you know that’s part of it when you get into a postseason. We’ll go into Indy this week and hopefully get three duals wins over there and then hopefully kind of head back and after this weekend things really start slowing down for us and we kind of start our taper phase. Not really our taper phase, it will be more of a really hard training phase and not as much competition, and more so in the practice room just getting guys ready to kind of peak for that regional time.”

The Pioneers, who had runner-up MEC efforts from Hunter Ross (133), Gavin Quiocho (141), Caleb Brooks (149) and 184-pounder Kyle Homet, are building toward the regional at Tiffin.

“It’s going to be getting our guys as healthy as we possibly can before March 1st when we go to that regional tournament,” added coach Cottrell, who said the Pioneers are trying to snag the regional tournament for an upcoming season at Glenville, which will see the Waco Center act as the host site for next year’s potential MEC three-peat. “We have another tough one this weekend. That’s going to be three good ones and more opportunity for some of our guys to climb up in the rankings. It’s an exciting weekend. It’s a good one. This is always a tough one though because we usually wrestle these same three teams and they are always really good teams.

“It’s coming off the back end of a championship, and so it’s a little tough sometimes to get your guys back up after you come to town and everybody is celebrating and everybody is telling you how good you are. It’s kind of equivalent to one of those track games in football where you go out and you upset or beat a really good team and then you got, a Notre Dame, and a Northern Illinois coming to town and they are dangerous. If you’re not prepared right things could go bad. We just got to make sure our guys are ready to go.”

According to the NWCA latest rankings, only the former St. Marys Blue Devil Houser is not ranked.

Leading the way is ex-Parkersburg South Robert Dutton Award winner Gavin Quiocho, who is ranked second at 133 and is coming off a national runner-up finish after capturing the NCAA 133-pound title two years ago.

“He’s going to be our 125-pounder moving forward,” coach Cottrell said of the 15th-ranked Drousias. “We kind of got to figure some things out at (1)33 if it’s going to be Quiocho there or Hunter Ross. Gavin’s wrestling up at 141 right now, but he’s not going to be there so we’re probably going to drop him down and him and Ross will wrestle-off and do that whole thing at the end of the year for (1)33, and then (No. 10) Caleb Brooks will be our (1)41. (No. 10) Gabe (Onorato) will be at (1)49.

“He’s coming back from injury and should be back in two weeks. (No. 4, two-time MEC champ) Guy will be at 157. Him (Houser) and Loranzo (Rajaonarivelo) are both right there and they are pretty close. Right now it’s Wiley and he’s wrestling really well. If Loranzo is going to get that spot he’s going to have to take it from him. Right now our guy is Wiley and he’s looking really good and having a great year since he moved up to 165.”

Pummel is ranked fourth at 174, Homet is sixth at 184, the ex-Parkersburg Big Red Johnson is seventh at 197 and Casto is 10th at heavyweight.

“Nick won’t be wrestling for a couple weeks,” added the coach. “He has a little injury so we probably won’t see him until regional time, but get him back healthy for regionals and he’ll be alright.”

When asked what the plans were for Saturday and finding a replacement for Johnson, the Pioneer head man talked about the options.

“I don’t really know what we are going to do yet,” admitted coach Cottrell. “We’re probably just going to be throwing in some extra guys and trying to find spaces. The big thing with our team this year is we have a lot of redshirts and so it doesn’t allow us much depth to move around in case we want to pull a redshirt late, and ideally you don’t want to do that for two matches. We’ll see. Kyle Homet might jump up some.

“We might have some other (1)84-pounder, or (1)74s jump up. We’ll just kind of see what those teams weigh-in and if we need one of those guys to jump up they will and if not, if we can take a forfeit at the class and it’s not going to lose us the dual then we might just have to forfeit the class and not put our other guys in kind of a compromising position, but we’ll see. That’s all going to kind of be on the fly.”

All in all, Cottrell is excited to see how the G-men can come together for the stretch run.

“It’s the most important month, for sure,” stressed the coach. “We just want to get through this one and give our guys an opportunity to get some more ranked wins and then after this weekend it’s focusing on getting guys healthy, the ones that we have to get healthy, but the other ones got to be really training hard so we are looking to get into that kind of peak shape over the next three weeks to be ready for regionals. That way we can taper the week of and have our guys feeling really well.”

Contact Jay Bennett at [email protected]