Staff photo / Preston Byers. Austintown Fitch’s Reghan Koch, left, sprawls during a takedown attempt by Loveland’s Elizabeth Madison during Sunday’s girls 170-pound championship match at the OHSAA state wrestling tournament in Columbus.

COLUMBUS — Three area athletes – South Range’s Tyson Seesholtz, Austintown Fitch’s Reghan Koch and West Branch’s Beau Nezbeth – came up short Sunday in the OHSAA state wrestling tournament finals.

Each of the wrestlers had won their first three matches of the weekend to earn a spot in their respective division’s state title match, but none could overcome the stiff challenges that stood in the way.

For Seesholtz, a senior and returning state runner-up, his Division III 165-pound finals loss came to Graham Local’s Jake Hoke, who had ripped through the championship bracket with three straight technical-fall victories. While the Raiders standout avoided the same fate, Hoke similarly outpaced and outworked Seesholtz en route to a 22-8 win.

“He’s just solid, very solid all over,” Seesholtz said of Hoke. “None of my attacks were working, even the ones I mixed in weren’t working. He’s just fundamental in all areas of the game.”

The defeat brings an end to the career of what South Range head coach Frank Giordano has said multiple times is the greatest in program history.

Seesholtz, a four-time state qualifier, finished fourth at 150 pounds as a freshman in 2023 and second in the same weight class a year ago after a fruitless showing at 165 pounds during an injury-affected sophomore season.

This year, Seesholtz won 44 of his 47 matches, with his first two losses coming during the same tournament to out-of-state opponents.

But Seesholtz, who leaves the Raiders with 160 career wins, doesn’t view Sunday’s setback as a loss.

“Sometimes you do everything right, and it just doesn’t happen,” Seesholtz said of the match vs. Hoke. “There are so many intangibles that go into a wrestling match that sometimes it’s just out of your control. That was one of those times.

“It’s not a loss. I don’t think of wins and losses. I think of fun, enjoyment and trying my best. And you saw all three of those on display. Some days, it’s enough. Some days, it’s not.”

BLOODY BEAU’S ‘REVENGE TOUR’ COMES TO AN END

West Branch’s Nezbeth went on what Warriors head wrestling coach Chris Dorris described as a “revenge tour” this season.

Before transferring back to West Branch after several years at Louisville, Nezbeth got his first taste of the OHSAA state tournament last March, albeit more of an appetizer. The then-Leopards junior came and went in Columbus, losing both of his Division I 138-pound matches by decision.

Then, he headed back to Beloit, where the tour got underway, as he won the first 46 matches of the season. While his undefeated streak came to an end during last weekend’s district tournament, Nezbeth quickly resumed winning, pinning his final two opponents in Kenston to place third.

This weekend, he did more of the same, earning victories while pushing the pace and, more often than not, spilling some blood.

Nezbeth is a “bleeder,” as Dorris put it, and that was evident in almost every match he had in Columbus. But more importantly, he proved to also be a winner, as he defeated Reed Bodie of DeSales, Cambridge’s Marshall Laishley and Bellevue’s Ben Jacobs by decision to clinch a state finals appearance one year after failing to win anything at all.

Unfortunately for Nezbeth, the tour’s grand finale could not live up to the opening acts. On Sunday, Nezbeth fell 9-3 in the Division II 150-pound championship match to Bishop Watterson’s James Lindsay, who had been the state runner-up in back-to-back years before meeting Nezbeth on Sunday.

“It’s very difficult to go against experience. Anybody around at any level of athletics, you’ll see experience win,” Dorris said. “Especially at the Ohio state wrestling tournament, this is the pinnacle. If you look around the country, Ohio is one of the top states for wrestling. We knew Lindsay had the experience, and we knew it was going to be a dogfight. We thought we could compete, and we did.”

Nezbeth, who had been able to tap into an impressively large gas tank at multiple points throughout the weekend, could not blaze past Lindsay the way he did in several previous matches.

“It definitely wasn’t my best work. That was not what I planned out, really,” Nezbeth said of the final. “I tried to throw some fakes in there, tried to get around him and tried to create some angles. He was a very strong wrestler, a two-time finalist, now he’s a champ. He also had a good game plan. I was trying to get him out of his stance trying to make some angles, but it didn’t come out that way at all.”

With the loss, Nezbeth finished his senior season 51-2, having beaten all but Lindsay and Perry’s Chance Schlauch in Kenston.

KOCH’S UNDEFEATED SEASON UNDONE

Entering Sunday’s girls 170-pound state final, Koch had won each and every one of her 54 matches this season, with most coming via pinfall. But a perfect season was not meant to be for the Fitch sophomore; it was meant for her opponent, Loveland’s Elizabeth Madison.

Like Koch, Madison was unbeaten in her 39 matches, but unlike the Fitch star, Madison had been on the state final stage plenty before, having won back-to-back titles as a freshman and sophomore before falling in the championship match a year ago.

When the two undefeated 170-pounders met Sunday, Koch’s string of quick pinfall victories came to an end. Instead, Madison used her strength to muscle Koch to the mat and pin her 84 seconds after the opening whistle to finish her career with three state titles and a 143-2 career record.

“I think I just got ahead of myself in the moment,” Koch said. “I just let everything I had get away from me. She’s strong. She is a lot stronger than I thought she would be.”

Koch’s second-place finish is a major improvement from her freshman performance, which netted an admittedly disheartening seventh-place medal. Before Sunday, Koch, a two-time district champion, had pinned her three state opponents in a combined 2:16.

“The more experiences you get, the better you’re going to be – that’s obvious,” Fitch head coach John Burd said. “So I know for Reghan, this is a great learning experience for her to move forward that she’s going to build on. Going into her junior season, she now has a lot to look forward to, to build on.”

Burd said he is looking forward to Koch to have another great offseason.

“[I want her to] understand that it’s a tough sport. It’s not always going to go your way. It’s how you rebound from the losses that is going to make you the better person,” Burd said. “The whole goal is to get better year after year so she can get to the next level, her college education and so forth and to take these experiences into her junior year and hopefully grow from them. She’s grown a ton over the last 365 days. She’s going to continue to grow, she’s going to get stronger, she’s going to get better. … The whole staff, the whole team is looking forward to seeing what she can do as a junior.”

ON THE PODIUM

In addition to the three state finalists, five area wrestlers earned a top-eight placing at the state tournament this weekend: Hubbard’s Markel Hackwelder, Canfield’s Gabe Miller, Poland’s Ella Thomas, Austintown Fitch’s Mya Quarles and South Range’s Ralph “Ralphie” Stellato.

Thomas, a junior, earned the highest placing of the bunch, finishing fourth in the girls 100-pound division for her third finish in the top four in as many years. Meanwhile, Miller, last year’s Division II 190-pound runner-up, earned sixth place at 190 while battling a monthslong back injury.

Hackwelder improved upon a medal-less trip to Columbus last year to finish sixth in the Division II 132-pound, avenging a decisive loss to district opponent Devion Coffin of Benedictine in the process. Both Stellato and Quarles finished eighth in the Division III 106-pound and girls 140-pound weight classes, respectively.