These Marysville High School wrestlers earned medals for the 2020-21 Division I state tournament. They are from left, Colton Powers (170), eighth; and Erryl Will (152) and Lincoln Heard (138), seventh. (Journal-Tribune photo by Tim Miller)
Those who were able to attend this past weekend’s state wrestling tournaments could tell a big difference between past and present venues.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the tournaments were not held at The Ohio State University’s Schottenstein Center.
Instead, the Divisions I, II and III events were split between three separate locations.
D-I grapplers competed at Hilliard Darby, D-II took to the mats at Sparta Highland and D-III competition was held at Marion Harding.
This was the first time the state tournament had not been held at the Schottenstein Center since 1998.
Previous locations were the Nutter Center at Wright State University from 1991-98, the Cincinnati Gardens (1990) and St. John Arena at The Ohio State University from 1971 to 1989.
As far as the Division I tournament, which I covered, there were noticable changes.
For one thing, I got a better parking space both Saturday and Sunday at Darby than I ever did with a pass at the Schott.
That’s because there simply weren’t as many fans present as there usually were for the huge three-day extravaganza that had previously been held in Columbus.
Speaking of fans, there weren’t enough in attendance either day to create the electricity that is normally associated with the state tournament.
The roar of the crowds from years gone by thoroughly juiced everyone in attendance, even the fans still waiting for their favorite wrestler or wrestlers to take to the mats.
There also didn’t seem (at least to me) to be as much hustle and bustle at mat tables as there had been in past years.
Watching everyone work hard to keep up with matches from all three divisions in one location was just as much fun as watching the matches.
Despite the far smaller number of fans and noise, the state matches were just as intense.
You could tell wrestlers were intent on going for the gold.
It was the same mindset for the athletes, whether there would have been 10 or 10,000 fans watching.
The Union County area qualified 11 grapplers to the state tournaments.
They were Lincoln Heard, Erryl Will, Colton Powers, Zach McMinn, Ben Bickerstaff and Jack Golla of MHS (Division I), Billy Reed-Bodey (Fairbanks) and Isiah Leasure (Triad) in D-III and Reese Chapman, Josh Proper and Oliver Byerly (Jonathan Alder) in Division III.
Of that total, four earned medals.
Reed-Bodey was sixth at heavyweight, Heard (138) and Will (152) earned seventh place and Powers (170) finished eighth due to an injury default.
That’s not a bad finish for a 2020-21 campaign that was hampered to a certain extent by the coronavirus pandemic.
There were few, if any, big-time tournaments held this past season.
Teams had to be content with dual or triangular matches. At least, grapplers had the opportunity to compete during the regular season.
Splitting the three divisions into different locations may have cut down on the huge excitement of past state tournaments.
The most important aspect, however, was that wrestlers from throughout the state were allowed the opportunity to compete for state accolades.
That’s something that didn’t happen about this time a year ago due to the COVID shutdown.
Let’s hope at some point down the road, we can have all three divisions back together at the same location.