Eagles ready for national wrestling showdown in ND

Press Sports Editor
sports@presspublications.com

One of the state’s top wrestling programs is working hard to get better.
The Clay Eagles have four wrestlers headed to the U.S. Marine Corps Juniors & 16-U National Championships in Fargo, North Dakota, which will take place from July 12-20.
Sophomore Garrison Weisner, who nearly won the Division I state title at 120 pounds last season after finishing as the runner-up, leads the way. He’ll be joined by Josh Medina, Gabe McNally and Jacob Purtee, an incoming freshman.
Purtee qualified for nationals after competing in the Central Regional Championships in Fort Wayne, where he faced off against the best the Midwest has to offer.
Meanwhile, Weisner, Medina and McNally competed at a USA Wrestling event at Ohio Northern University a few weeks ago.
“At the national tournament, they’ll get exposure. Not only are they going to get their hands on them, (but) they’ll feel what it could be like to compete against the number-one kid in the nation in the weight class. They’ll feel what that’s like,” said Clay coach Justin Wharton. “They’ll say, ‘Hey, maybe we’re not that far off.’ Garrison Weisner or Gabe McNally can see that they’re in the mix and they’ll get to watch the kids, not just from Team Ohio, but Pennsylvania and California. They’ll have the chance to see how they wrestle, how they warm up, how they deal with it.”
Wharton talked about two more wrestlers that just missed qualifying for nationals.
“We had Kyle Simpson, who just missed qualifying for nationals. He was one place away, he’s an alternate. He got to wrestle all the best kids from Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati,” said Wharton. “David Purtee, he just missed making it to the national tournament. Those guys come a long way and we’ve got younger guys who didn’t qualify but got that experience. They will realize that it’s going to pay off for them.”
The most important thing is that Wharton’s crew is wrestling and working to get better.
“The way we look at it, we had great participation. We host the Lake Erie Wrestling Club, and there are three or four athletes from other schools, a young man from Lake, and two from Oak Harbor that qualified. At Clay, we had great participation — out of 60 kids, we probably had 25 to 30 kids,” he said. “It gets you almost another season of experience; some guys have had over 40 offseason matches. We have several athletes going to Fargo at the end of July and there are other offseason tournaments. You get a season’s worth of experience, and it’s very laid back. Even as a coach, it’s laid back, but they’re still getting that mat time and the experience. The training, practicing twice per week during the summer, because of nationals, it makes the practices a little more meaningful from April until the end of June.
“I’m really thrilled about how hard this group has worked and how that leads into next season. The first summer I was hired, there were no national team members, then it was two, and now we’ve doubled it to four. It’s a huge deal to qualify for this national trip. Team Ohio puts together a camp, and it’s got all the best kids from the state, and one of the best coaches in Elyria’s Erik Burnett. There are college coaches, getting my athletes exposed to those coaches, it’s going to go a long way.”
Wharton is very optimistic about what the future holds for his program.
“I feel the best I’ve felt in my short time as the coach at Clay. Each year, it should be like that, but the participation, the buy-in, I feel really good. The workload is something that I have to manage,” he said. “For me now, it’s managing (the wrestlers). Maybe they take a week or a weekend off, but I’d rather have that problem than have to pull teeth to get guys out.