The wrestling team had its best performance at the NCAA Division II Championships in over a decade, placing 13th with four wrestlers receiving All-America honors.

Senior heavyweight Jake Southwick was the top performer with a third-place finish.

Southwick won all but one match at the national tournament. Ashland head coach Tim Dernlan said that one move by Southwick’s opponent was probably the difference between first and third for the two-time All-American.

“He’s a special athlete,” Dernlan said. “He does the extra work, he works really hard and he’s great in the classroom, too. For him to get third in the nation was awesome.”

Southwick, who did not have a winning record during his first two years, capped a stellar career with a benchmark season.

He holds the school record for most pins and most wins in a single season.

The other All-American performers were sophomore Adli Edwards, senior Marc Hoff and freshman Joe Brandt.

Edwards, who is in his fourth year with the program but just his second year of eligibility due to injury, finished eighth at 133 pounds.

Fighting back from two labrum surgeries and a knee injury, Dernlan was proud to see Edwards place in just his first year on varsity.

“It was so neat to see,” Dernlan said. “He just developed a unique style that people didn’t know what to do with.”

Marc Hoff also finished eighth at 149 pounds after dropping down a weight class from last year, when he did not even qualify for Nationals.

“He’s been in the sport for a long time, so it was neat that that paid off for him,” Dernlan said.

True freshman Joe Brandt pinned the third-ranked 197-pounder in the nation twice and finished seventh. He also won an award for most pins in the least amount of time, the first AU wrestler to do so.

“Joe Brandt is one of the stories that inspires everybody,” Dernlan said. “He’s a true freshman and just kept getting better and better. He came in and did extra work every single day this year. People outside the program weren’t expecting a lot out of him at the beginning of the year.”

Now in his fourth year in charge of the program, Dernlan has seen steady improvement throughout his tenure. His teams have finished 36th, 20th and now 13th at Nationals. It was the highest finish for the Eagles since the 2002 season.

“It seems like it was kind of like that story ‘The Little Engine that Could,’” Dernlan said. “There weren’t any premiere, marquee guys on the team, other than maybe Southwick, and everybody just kept coming together and stepping up.”

Though it is losing several wrestlers to graduation, including two all-Americans, AU’s wrestling program shows no signs of slowing down on its climb to the top of Division II.

“The recruiting class we have coming in is the best recruiting class we’ve ever put together here at Ashland,” Dernlan said.

Pairing that recruiting class with one of Ashland’s best freshman classes in recent history, he thinks next year’s team will be ok without the presence of Southwick. With the same work ethic and determination as this year’s group, he says, the program will continue toward becoming a perennial national championship contender.