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.
