COLUMBUS — Four Perrysburg wrestlers reached the Division I state championship match Sunday, and four Yellow Jackets came away with state championships.
At the Schottenstein Center on the campus of Ohio State University, Perrysburg sophomore Marcus Blaze (120-pound weight class), senior Ryan Avalos (126), senior Joey Blaze (165), and senior Myles Takats (175) all won state titles.
Despite wrestling with an arm injury Sunday, Joey Blaze capped a perfect 44-0 season with a 9-3 championship win over Cincinnati LaSalle sophomore Carson Thomas (42-9).
With the cancellation of the 2020 state tournament, no wrestler could possibly be in position to win their fourth state title. However, for Joey Blaze, it was third.
Marcus Blaze finishes at 52-1 after earning a 21-6 technical fall victory in the state final against a familiar opponent, Clay senior Micah Medina (23-5). For Marcus, it was his second consecutive state title.
Avalos (40-2), after finishing as state runner-up last year, won his state championship by also defeating a Northwest Ohio wrestler, Toledo Waite sophomore Phoenix Contos (44-4), 7-2, in his state championship match.
Takats took overtime to win his state title match, but 10 seconds into the overtime got a takedown to defeat Lakewood St. Edward sophomore Jarrel Miller (31-7), 3-1.
The field in this year’s big school division was arguably the deepest and most experienced seen in a long time. Three consecutive middleweights had seven or more returning state placers, and each featured multiple wrestlers that have appeared in state finals during their career.
That made Perrysburg’s team finish that much more remarkable. For the second straight year, Perrysburg, which qualified a school-record 10 wrestlers and got eight placers, finished second as a team, scoring 152½ points to finish behind St. Edward (195½).
However, only twice prior to this year had a team advanced all 14 of its wrestlers to the state tournament. St. Edward did so with its most recent national title team in 2007, along with their 2012 team that finished second in the country, and they did it again this year.
It is the 14th time St. Edward cracked the 100-point barrier, even though Perrysburg did so also. This year an Eagles lineup that has zero seniors advanced its full complement of wrestlers, 14 wrestlers — one in every weight class — to the state tournament, overcoming the absence of returning state placer Zach Delsanter (215) due to a season-ending injury sustained in mid-December.
Brecksville-Broadview Heights (121), which qualified 11 wrestlers, was third, followed by Massillon Perry (107), Wadsworth (95), Dublin Coffman (71), Olentangy Liberty (66), Springboro (58), LaSalle (56) and Nordonia (49).
Climbing the ladder
The Yellow Jackets have been climbing the ladder in team placement, placing tenth just a few years ago.
Perrysburg, which finished second to St. Edward in the state tournament last year by 10½ points, and had a chance to win it heading into the finals, returned six state finalists from that team to this year’s tournament.
The Yellow Jackets advanced six district champions, including the Blaze brothers; Avalos, Wynton Denkins (150), and Takats and Jake Wood (157). Finishing second at district was 2021 state placer Diego Chavez (138), while returning state champion Cole Evans finished third.
Perrysburg coach Scott Burnett credits the biddy program for the program’s success.
“It’s a testament to what we are doing from our biddy level into our junior high, obviously our high school team, the people that are in place, the fathers that have careers and 9-5 jobs,” Burnett said.
“They come and they sacrifice. I know they are tired, and I know at the end of this year, they came here, and I didn’t have to do a lot of the biddy coaching, which allowed me and our staff to focus on our high school kids and try to put a run together and win a championship.
“I know how hard that is. I know how tired I am,” Burnett continued. “It’s tough. I can only imagine what they do. Because of the hard work and the sacrifice our program does, we are able to be in a position to climb like that.
“I remember not having a state qualifier. You come down here and all of a sudden you look up and you are tenth, right? Then you’re fifth and you are sixth.
“Last year we had those kids who just went on that crazy run, they were knocking on the door winning (state team title), and we obviously didn’t, but getting second like that, doing what we did this year, I could not be more proud.”
As a team this year, the Yellow Jackets faced adversity, including several key injuries, forcing them to pull out of the state team duals tournament after they easily won a regional tournament.
“We’ve earned it, for sure,” Burnett said. “We took some licks, so we had to retreat a little bit, but we had some minor victories along the way. We didn’t win the war, we’d like to be first, but we are going to start rebuilding our fleet and we are going to work to chase state championships.”
The team had a theme called “burning the boats” to help them overcome the adversity.
“It’s just an old thing,” Burnett said. “I think it was the Vikings — our coaches kind of thought of it.
“They would go to conquer a foreign land, they’d land, they’d get off their ships, they’d burn their ships, so they had no choice but to move forward. There was no retreating.
“They had to essentially get the job done and conquer their foes or else they would fail, die, or whatever. So, we just kind of took that out, whatever it takes for a buy-in, let’s get after it, and we pretty much did that.”
