In the first team-scored match of the season, Ohio will look to come together for a victory.
Although Ohio doesn’t know exactly who it will wrestle against this weekend, the team is ready for the Navy Classic, its third tournament of the season.
The annual tournament in Annapolis, Maryland will be the Bobcats’ first match of the season where they will be scored as a team.
The Bobcats are coming off of the Eastern Michigan Duals, where redshirt junior Tywan Claxton came out victorious in the 149-pound weight class, sporting wins in each of his three bouts to remain undefeated on the season.
“The opens you go, and we had three guys in the finals, but here it’s for real. They’re keeping team scores, and that’s fun to me,” coach Joel Greenlee said of the Navy Classic. “I think your whole team can get into it, and it brings your team together.”
The team is in for more tests, as many “Power 5” conference schools will be there, including Big Ten school Wisconsin and Big 12 school West Virginia.
“We’ll see a lot of teams from out east that we won’t necessarily see, and it’s a great opportunity for us to see some ranked guys,” Greenlee said. “I think Cody Walters is gonna have a tough bracket; there’ll be a couple ranked guys there.”
A 157-pound redshirt junior, Spartak “Sparty” Chino, is a match-time decision for this weekend’s tournament, but that hasn’t stopped him from being a leader for the Bobcats.
Ohio finished sixth last year, but Chino has not wrestled in the Navy Classic the past two seasons due to injuries.
“I just look at it by leading by example by doing the right thing,” Chino said. “I try to lead vocally as much as I can or as much as I see fit, but I think in the sport of wrestling, you can talk all you want, but at the end it’s about showing up and wrestling as hard as you can on the mat.”
The Bobcats have other leaders on the team, which will help propel them through the early grind of the season. One of those leaders is 165-pound redshirt senior Harrison Hightower, who placed third in last year’s Navy Classic.
“There’s not a whole heck of a lot of things I can learn, but I can perfect the things I know now, so it’s the little things and doing everything right,” Hightower said.
The Navy Classic, historically, has been a tough place to wrestle, and the Bobcats will look to finish strong in their last tournament before Thanksgiving.
Greenlee has the Bobcats focused on competing as a team, but wants them to remember the task at hand.
“We want to score team points, get majors, get falls, tech falls, all of those things,” Greenlee said. “For us, we want to go there and win the dang tournament.”
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