The Ashland University men’s wrestling team saw their season end after returning from the NCAA Division II Nationals in Cleveland, Ohio on March 8-9. While three wrestlers qualified for nationals, the results of the tournament were bittersweet.

Redshirt juniors Bret Romanzak and Christian Price and redshirt sophomore Tristen Weirich all qualified for nationals. Romanzak won his region at 165-pounds in the NCAA Super Regional competition while Price came in third at 174-pounds and Weirich also came in third at 285-pounds, getting them into the tournament.

Last year, the Eagles placed fifth as a team at nationals and ended up with two national champions in Romanzak and current alumni Luke Cramer. This year saw Ashland finish 27th overall with Weirich coming in sixth and Romanzak and Price losing their opening matches.

AU’s head wrestling coach Josh Hutchens said that even with the nationals results, it was a decent season overall.

“It was tough to live up to last season,” Hutchens said. “It was a real tough region this year but it was a decent season.”

This season was especially difficult because of how young that the team was, he said.

“We had a really young lineup this year,” Hutchens said. “Seven out of ten were either freshmen or sophomores so that was difficult not having that experience.”

Being such a young team also impacted their consistency, Hutchens said.

“It was tough to try to get the consistency that we had last year,” he said. “We had a lot of potential and beat some really good guys individually through the course of the season but also had some losses.”

Defending champion Romanzak lost his opening match at nationals 5-2 to Pitt-Johnstown’s Devin Austin before suffering a gruesome ankle injury late in the match, retiring him for the rest of the tournament.

This was a tough blow to the team, Hutchens said.

“Bret means a lot to our team as a leader,” Hutchens said. “He was in a good position to repeat his title but unfortunately things went wrong.”

Price lost both of his matches at 174 pounds leaving Weirich who was competing at his first ever nationals.

Being able to make it was a huge accomplishment, he said.

“It was a very tough weight class to make it to nationals so when I finally made it I just thought ‘yes’ although I was so exhausted that I couldn’t really process it at first,” Weirich said.

Weirich won his opening match by topping Simon Fraser’s Ciaran Ball in a 5-2 decision. He then lost in overtime in the quarterfinal match to Jarrod Hinrichs of Nebraska-Kearney after a hands to the face call before pinning Shippensburg’s Derek Berberick to clinch All-American status.

He then finished sixth after beating Newberry’s Patton Gossett 6-5 before falling to Notre Dame’s Kameron Teacher 14-5 and Simon Fraser’s Ball 4-1.

Weirich felt that he didn’t give 100-percent with his match against Ball, he said.

“I kept on thinking during the match that I wasn’t using my full strength,” Weirich said. “I kept thinking why didn’t I go 100-percent for the match.”

Becoming an All-American felt good but the sixth place finish was still very disappointing for Weirich, he said.

“It felt good to be an All-American but I didn’t expect to finish sixth,” Weirich said. “I had worked for so much more but then lost to a guy I beat in in the first round. There were a lot of things that I was grateful for but there’s still a lot that I’m working towards.”

Even with the disappointing finish, Weirich thought that the team overall had a good season, he said.

Hutchens said that the big thing that came out of this season was growth.

“What we got out of this season was growth,” Hutchens said. “Everybody got to see themselves go through the year, improve, and see what they’re capable of.”

For Hutchens, it was the team’s work ethic, dedication, and toughness throughout the season that really impressed him, he said.

“While the whole team worked hard I was especially impressed with the young guys,” Hutchens said. “A lot of them showed toughness and had no fear of backing down.”

Although the season only recently ended, Weirich is already looking forward to seeing how next season shapes up.

“My hope is that everybody heals up on the team and gets better, stronger and pushes themselves as much as possible,” Weirich said. “I would like to see everyone buy into what Bret and I bought into and continually get better.”

Hutchens said that he has very high expectations for the team in the future and believes that the Eagles will be hungry to prove themselves.

“I think going into next year, guys are going to know what they’re capable of,” Hutchens said. “Guys are going to be hungry to prove it and I think the goals for next year will be pretty high. We lost zero starters this year so we’ll have a really solid team.”