ASHLAND – After stomping its way through the regular season in yet another bruising fashion, the Ashland boys wrestling team took a minute to take a breath on Monday night.
The talent-laden Division I Arrows gathered as a squad, chowed down some Chipotle and settled in for a showing of “Rocky III.”
It was fitting the grapplers chose that entry from the “Rocky” franchise. Ashland doesn’t qualify for the underdog role featured in the original.
The Arrows – heavily favored to three-peat on Saturday when they host the Ohio Cardinal Conference Championships at AHS – are certainly in more of a “Rocky III” era.
The vibe these days is all about staying at the top and building a bridge to future success.
Their theme song might as well be the “Eye of the Tiger” track that helped “Rocky III” maintain its popularity through the years.
“We’re doing stuff that’s gonna build and push us beyond just this sport, and that’s how a program gets really good – when the goals are past high school and about future development,” said Ashland junior Mason Bauer, the reigning OCC Wrestler of the Year.
“We have a lot of dedicated people on this team and that’s where a lot of our success comes from. Just looking forward, we don’t plan on slowing down. I feel like we’re just gonna keep winning by larger and larger margins.”
The 138-pound Bauer is a pillar of the current edition of Ashland wrestling and already one of the best in program history. His 36-2 record this season and his 134 career wins are just part of what makes opponents of the Arrows shudder to step on the mat.
Bauer is ranked third in Division I at his weight by the highly respected DubStat and will be hunting his third OCC crown this Saturday. The Arrows are ranked No. 8 as a team.
Like Bauer, junior 150-pounder Guardian Miller (35-4 this season, 128 career wins) also is ranked third by DubStat and chasing his third league title.
Leaders like the junior duo have set the tone for dominance within the program, making this week’s OCC Championships even more must-see for area wrestling fans.
“We don’t have a ton of home events, so it’s cool to have one like this,” Miller said. “… Most of our weights are gonna be top contenders (for OCC titles).”
While it’s not high on their list of focuses, the Arrows carry some intriguing bragging rights with them to the mats this week.
Since the OCC formed in 2003-04, Ashland has won the league crown in every year ending in a 6.
The program’s first OCC title came in 2006 and its second was in 2016 – the latter snapping a league-record run of eight straight championships by then-powerhouse Lexington.
If the Arrows can match expectations and snag first place Saturday, it not only will be the third three-peat in any conference in the history of the program (also 1999-2001 and 2016-2019), but it will give them nine OCC championships.
That would send AHS past Lexington for the most in league history.
“I think it just shows the commitment to the feeder systems, Team JAWS (the school system’s youth program),” third-year Ashland head coach Tommy Bauer said. “We constantly talk about the seventh-grade class, the sixth-grade class because our freshmen now are gonna be seniors to those classes. We really try to focus on the development the right way.”
“It’s historically been a seasonal program here – November to March – but the commitment is always there,” he said. “We’re trying to change it to more of a 12-month program, where we’re trying to touch the mat at least once or twice in the offseason for everybody.”
Ashland has not finished lower than runner-up in the OCC for more than a decade now.
Former head coach Sean Seder (2014-2023) helped establish the program as a consistent winner and contender on the state stage. Bauer and his staff – including current coaches Wade Miller, Brandon O’Neill, Sid Ohl and Jarrod Strine – have added to the legacy.
Every single wrestler the Arrows will send into action Saturday has a winning record this season and six of them already have an OCC title to their name.
Bauer and Miller aren’t even the only 100-match winners on the squad.
Senior Budda Martin (36-4, ranked No. 4 at 215) has 117 victories while senior Talon Boyd (32-9, No. 16 at 165) has 101.
“Getting 100 wins is a good checkpoint that shows you’re on the right path,” Miller said. “But there are some really high-level programs where their guys might not get to 100 wins because they don’t wrestle that many matches or they wrestle an insanely tough schedule.”
“That’s something along the way that’s just a bit of recognition for all the time we’ve put in in the dark and not under the spotlight,” Mason Bauer said.
Junior Max Ohl (31-8, No. 17 at 120) needs just one more win to hit the century mark as well.
Assuming he is able to pick up that victory, the Arrows will be the first team in Ashland-area history to have five wrestlers reach the 100-win milestone in the same campaign.
What’s more impressive is that the statistical rarity is happening during a season in which the Arrows have faced a schedule stacked with challenging obstacles.
They placed sixth with a partial lineup at the loaded Wadsworth Grizzly Invitational Tournament, where the top two squads – Perrysburg and Detroit Catholic Central – were two of the best in the entire nation.
Ashland was second at the 54-team North Canton Hoover Holiday Tournament, then won Mansfield’s J.C. Gorman Invitational. That title ended a three-year reign by Medina Buckeye despite AHS missing usual starters Isaak Wickham (14-1) and Tuff Hutcheson (15-9 at 157).
The Arrows finished their dual schedule with a 17-3 record – the losses heavily impacted by forfeits – but coach Bauer said his squad is more built for tournament-style competition this winter.
He said big moments like the 100-win accolades help reiterate the hard work his program is putting in, adding that Ashland plans to recognize its 100-win matmen during Saturday’s tournament.
“That goes to all our coaches, too – we all work hard and it’s something to feel good about,” coach Bauer said. “I’m excited for those guys more than anything; they get to do it together.
“We want these guys to connect … just trying to raise their level of preparing, practicing, competing and just creating something to aspire to and something to chase.”
Sophomore Tyson Mateo (33-2, No. 8 at 106) joins Bauer, Miller, Ohl, Martin and Boyd as former OCC champs.
The Arrows also have 20-match winners in sophomore Kale Durig (20-11 at 113), freshman Paxton Young (21-16 at 132), sophomore Tristan Gibson (28-14 at 175) and senior Skyler Radeff (24-7 at heavyweight) all looking for their first league titles.
Filling out the rest of the squad’s OCC lineup will be Drake Martin (8-7 at 126), Nick Manges (14-8 at 144) and Tristan Moss (11-10 at 190).
Budda Martin said one of the team’s hopes is to have a wrestler in every single championship match. The senior, who recently committed to Ashland University to play football, said a lot of the Arrows’ biggest challenges come on the practice mats.
“Most of our injuries come from practice just because everyone’s drilling so hard,” Martin said.
Coach Bauer said he expects West Holmes and Madison – last year’s second- and third-place OCC finishers – will be the biggest challengers again Saturday.
The Rams have a pair of state-medal hopefuls in Jaxin Stancombe (No. 3 heavyweight in Division II) and Aiden Proctor (No. 6 at 157), while the Knights feature Louden Dixen (No. 3 at 157).
The OCC finals will unfold under a spotlight and there also will be walk-out songs. A livestream will be available for those who can’t attend.
It will be Ashland’s tournament to lose.
“When you get towards the postseason you’ve got to be a little more individual in this sport,” coach Bauer said. “So what we’re (focused on) is our guys trying to create training and prepare themselves individually, that way they get the best version of themselves.
“If they do that individually then, collectively at the end, the team will come together.”