Staff photo / Preston Byers South Range’s Tyson Seesholtz celebrates after pinning Delta’s Gunner Taylor in the Division III 165-pound championship semifinals on Saturday at the OHSAA state wrestling tournament in Columbus.

COLUMBUS — Three area athletes will enter OHSAA state wrestling tournament’s third and final day with a chance to leave the Schottenstein Center state champions.

After winning their first and only match Friday, South Range’s Tyson Seesholtz, West Branch’s Beau Nezbeth and Austintown Fitch’s Reghan Koch each won their respective championship quarterfinal and semifinal matches Saturday to earn a place in the state finals. For Seesholtz, this is the second year in a row he has done this.

Last March, Seesholtz, then a junior, pulled off a 5-3 win via an ultimate tiebreaker in the semifinals to advance to the Division III 150-pound title match. Saturday’s 165-pound semifinal against Delta’s Gunner Taylor was not too dissimilar.

Entering the third period, Seesholtz trailed 4-3, having been taken down for just the second time this season and with a stalling warning already levied against him. Shortly into the third, Seesholtz was called for stalling again, putting him down by two points.

Then, just as his coach, Frank Giordano, had pleaded, Seesholtz got going.

Six seconds after the stalling call, Seesholtz escaped and pulled back within a point, and with under a minute to go, Seesholtz finally went for it on the edge of the mat, taking Taylor down and planting him on his back. Moments later, the official slammed his hand on the mat, and Seesholtz spring to his feet to celebrate his pinfall victory.

“[I was thinking about] nothing but just action,” Seesholtz said of the start of the third period. “My coaching corner was yelling at me, ‘Get on it, get on it.’ And I got absolute faith in them, I’m sure they do with me. And you just got to listen to them and keep your ears open.”

Although it eventually happened, it took a while for Seesholtz to heed the advice of Giordano in the semifinals, especially considering he won his match Friday 18-4 and then pinned West Jefferson’s Rylan Puckett in the first period of the quarterfinals. The South Range coach attributed Seesholtz’s tentativeness to nerves.

“It was close. It was closer than it should have been,” Giordano said.

Seesholtz, who lost in last year’s 150-pound final to Beachwood’s Caleb Greenwood 11-10 after taking a 7-0 lead, has a chance to cap his high-school career with a state title Sunday. In the final, he will face Graham Local’s Jake Hoke, a sophomore who finished third at 175 pounds a year ago and has won each of his three matches this weekend via technical fall.

GO, BEAU, GO

Unlike Seesholtz, Nezbeth’s semifinal victory did not require a late comeback, but he nonetheless earned himself a place in Sunday’s Division II 150-pound state championship match.

For Nezbeth, he controlled the pace, and besides an early unnecessary roughness penalty that put it him down 1-0, the West Branch senior outwrestled Bellevue’s Ben Jacobs en route to an 11-1 win in the semifinal.

“We wrestled that kid before – we saw him at Kenston – and we beat him in overtime,” West Branch head coach Chris Dorris said. “But we knew watching film from our own matches, we had the same exact game plan. In that match, we pushed the pace, and we knew we could get him. And obviously, with Beau’s motor locked in, Beau had it the entire time.”

Nezbeth’s more dangerous match was actually his quarterfinal vs. Cambridge’s Marshall Laishley, who led 1-0 until Nezbeth exploded from bottom and successfully escaped with 43 seconds left in the third period. For the rest of the third and in the sudden-victory overtime period, Nezbeth continued to push the pace, running back to the center of the mat and looking for takedowns on a clearly tiring Laishley. The strategy paid off late in overtime, when Nezbeth earned a match-winning takedown with seven seconds left.

“Really tried to keep the pace,” Nezbeth said. “I knew going in – I watched plenty of film – that he does gas out, and he wanted to stay in the tie-up, and I wanted to create that space so that he didn’t have time to think of any moves he was gonna be able to hit.”

“Just knowing that I wanted to get back onto that line before him, it was going to rush him to get back on the line and keep him moving. I didn’t want him to get a break,” he said.

Nezbeth will meet Bishop Watterson’s James Lindsay in the championship Sunday.

QUICK WORK FOR KOCH

A year after a disappointing seventh-place finish as a freshman, Koch has not wasted any time during her second trip to Columbus.

Entering the tournament with an undefeated 51-0 record, Koch has efficiently improved to 54-0 after two days at the Schottenstein Center. Following a 77-second pinfall win against first-round opponent Evelyn Krauss of Delaware Hayes on Friday, Koch made sure not to wait around nearly as long on Friday.

Koch pinned Fairfield’s Lillian Grogan 27 seconds into their girls 170-pound quarterfinal to start Saturday, and after a lengthy break, Koch put away Canal Winchester senior Razilee Wisseh in 32 seconds.

“I was so relaxed beforehand, which is usually I’m not able to be,” Koch said of her semifinal. “I just went out there, and I picked up so much intensity off the bat. When I shot, I, like, blacked out.”

With the win, Koch has earned herself no worse than second place at state, which is coincidentally the story of her championship opponent’s career.

In Sunday’s final, Koch will face Loveland senior Elizabeth Madison, who has a 158-2 record in high school, which includes two state championships, four state finals and even a win over Koch.

“I wrestled her before – she did beat me – but there’s no way to know if I’m going to win or she’s going to win,” Koch said. “It’s about who has more determination, more heart when they go out there. We’re both really good wrestlers.”

Madison, much like Koch, has made a habit of pinning her opponents. The Loveland senior earned pinfall wins over Eastwood’s Eliana Rush and Chelsea Gipson of Cleveland Heights in her first two matches before shutting out Napoleon’s Martina Ebaugh Ortega 9-0 in the semifinals.

NEVER GIVING UP

In addition to the finalists trio, five more area wrestlers survived Saturday and, most importantly, earned a top-eight placing at this year’s state tournament. And two of the five did it the hardest way possible.

South Range’s Ralphie Stellato and Austintown Fitch’s Mya Quarles each got off to a less-than-ideal start, considering they both lost their opening matches of the event by pinfall. But they crucially recovered to finish Friday on a high note and come into Saturday with some much-needed momentum.

For Stellato, his 11-3 win over Willard’s Jose Figueroa on Friday set up a match against Beachwood’s Phoenix Peters, an opponent who pinned him last weekend at the district tournament. And Stellato did much of the same thing to Peters as he did to Figueroa, winning 9-3 to earn a place on the Division III 106-pound podium.

“Last week, I feel like I was just excited to qualify for state and all that, but I don’t feel like I wrestled my best,” Stellato said. “I know this weekend I’ve been wrestling my hardest. I’ve been climbing and climbing and reaching my goals.”

With the win over Peters, Stellato, as sophomore, earned himself a top-eight placing before losing to Barnesville’s Easton Stephen. Stellato will wrestle Waynedale Branton Tapp, who won the Independence district at which Stellato finished fourth, in the seventh-place match Sunday.

Meanwhile, Quarles recovered from a second-period pinfall loss to Fairborn’s Serenity Ulmer-Earnest to earn a pinfall win for herself against Bridgette Rice of Delaware St. John’s on Friday. Quarles then survived a back-and-forth thriller against Brookfield’s Isabella Williams, who scored 16 points against Quarles. Fortunately, the Fitch senior scored her 17th point as time expired with an escape.

“My coaches being in there in my corner – if it wasn’t for them, I’m pretty sure I would have gave up,” Quarles said. “It was so much work, so much scrambling. She’s a good wrestler, but I was looking to Coach [John] Burd, I was looking to Gus [Sutton]. They got me through it, they really did. And the people upstairs – my mom, my other teammates were up there. I heard them, and I said, ‘I gotta go.'”

With the win, Quarles, who missed out on a junior season due to ACL and meniscus reconstruction surgery, earned herself a top-eight finish. She will get another shot at Ulmer-Earnest in the eighth-place match Sunday.

“Awesome, amazing, a testament to her hard work,” Fitch head coach John Burd said after Quarles’ win vs. Williams. “She was hurt all last year, she came back this year, had some ups and downs early and in the middle there. She just worked really, really hard to get herself in this position.”

BITTERSWEET SATURDAY

Hubbard’s Markel Hackwelder (Division II 132 pounds), Poland’s Ella Thomas (Girls 100 pounds) and Canfield’s Gabe Miller (Division II 190 pounds) all entered Saturday with a chance to become state champions. That was not the case by the end of the day.

In the championship quarterfinals, Hackwelder lost via technical fall, while Miller suffered a first-period pinfall loss to Miami Trace’s Tyler Stevens, who upended his title bid a year after he narrowly lost in the 190-pound state finals. Thomas, a 2024 fourth-place finisher and 2025 third-place finisher, beat Marysville’s Avery Riley via technical fall 20-5 in the quarterfinals and then fell shy of coming back to beat Tinora’s Bella Graziani in the semifinals, losing 12-8.

Fortunately for the trio, they each will competing Sunday.

Hackwelder won two matches – first, a 12-3 decision vs. University School’s Doyle Grosz, and then a 13-4 decision vs. Benedictine’s Devion Coffin – to earn a spot in the consolation semifinals and thus a chance at third place. Miller similarly beat Tri-Valley’s Aedin Seward in an ultimate tiebreaker before defeating Westfall’s Eli Wright 7-3 to reach the consolation semifinals, where he will face Kenton’s Isaac Blevins.

Hackwelder matches up with Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy’s Rocco Czarnecki today, and Thomas will wrestle Badin’s Teegan Herrington in a rematch of the first round, where Thomas won via third-period pinfall.

CHAMPIONSHIP SUNDAY

The final 336 matches of the high school wrestling season will take place Sunday across two sessions.

At 9:30 a.m., the first session of the day will begin with the consolation semifinals of all three boys divisions and the girls. Placing matches will follow at 10:45 a.m.

Following a break, four mats will be removed from the Schottenstein Center, leaving just the four that will be used for the state championship matches, which will begin at 5:15 p.m. after Hall of Fame festivities and the annual Parade of Champions.