Staff file photo / Preston Byers Austintown Fitch’s Reghan Koch gets set during an OHSAA state wrestling match vs. Brush’s Brooklyn Baskin on March 8, 2025 in Columbus.

This time last year, Reghan Koch was ready to quit.

Despite winning the 155-pound district title as a freshman and having a 27-2 record entering the state tournament, the Austintown Fitch standout admitted that she just wanted to “get it over with.”

Things couldn’t be any different now.

Heading into this weekend’s OHSAA state wrestling tournament, Koch has not only clearly outpaced her freshman season, but she’s incredibly happy doing it as well.

“The biggest difference is throughout the season, I learned to actually want to wrestle and learn to love wrestling,” Koch said. “Last year, I just burned myself out so bad, and I honestly wanted to quit. And this year, I want it so bad, and I feel like I love the sport more. Honestly, my intensity in the room has picked up a lot, too. Both the physical and mental aspect of it has changed.”

Koch’s former apathy, she says, stemmed from a severe knee injury that should have kept her from wrestling at all as a freshman.

Initially projected to miss the entire season while recovering, Koch pushed herself, much to the dismay of her family and doctors.

“You can probably ask anybody that knows me – I was trying to hobble around my house probably two weeks post-op,” Koch said. “I would sit on my couch and try and reactivate my quad. I was never fully scared to do anything to it. I was just like, ‘Well, they fixed it. I’m just gonna keep doing it.’ It was actually really funny.”

Although her request to play volleyball two months after her surgery was denied, Koch pushed the pace in her physical therapy to make it back for wrestling season. While she missed the start of the year, she eventually took to the mat last January, nearly three months before she said she was supposed to be cleared.

In order to wrestle, though, she had to wrestle with a bulky knee brace, which served as a constant reminder of her injury. And that wasn’t something Koch needed any help remembering.

“In a mental aspect, I was just kind of in my head, like, ‘Oh, I stepped wrong again. My career is done,'” Koch said.

Even the well-meaning worries from loved ones quickly became seeds of doubt.

“I was not necessarily afraid, but I think everybody else being like, ‘Don’t do that, you’re going to get hurt again, you’re going to make it worse’ – all of that outside input kind of made me skeptical about myself and how my body felt recovery-wise,” Koch said.

By the time the state tournament rolled around in March, Koch, who pinned her way through the 155-pound bracket at the Mentor district, wasn’t having very much fun, and she didn’t care nearly as much as she felt she should.

And her first trip to Columbus showed it.

After pinning her first-round opponent in 45 seconds, Koch suffered just her third loss of the season, one that crushed any hopes of becoming a state champion as a freshman. Following a consolation match win, Koch lost again.

The seventh-place showing is still a point of pain for the now-Fitch sophomore.

“I went into last year, and I was like, ‘I’m going to be a four-time state champ.’ And then I kind of got into the harder rounds of that tournament, and I just – after I lost to Jada [Weiss], my entire world felt like it crumbled right in front of me. I personally felt like [the rest of the tournament] just didn’t matter at that point. … I just felt so defeated, beyond anything I’ve ever felt in my entire life,” Koch said.

The losses in Columbus a year ago have undoubtedly fueled Koch in her return to the Schottenstein Center this weekend.

So far this season, Koch has a flawless 51-0 record, which includes more than 40 pins, four of which came during her repeat championship run at the Mentor district. Last weekend, she again pinned each of her opponents to claim the title, this time at 170 pounds. It took her a combined two minutes, 20 seconds.

This, of course, is all a part of Koch’s plan. She said that she wanted a “completely clean record” from start to finish, and she said during the season she set a goal for herself to rack up as many quick pinfalls as possible while not allowing a single near-fall point, which she has succeeded, entering the state tournament.

“This year, it seems she has a lot more confidence. She believes in herself more,” Fitch head coach John Burd said of Koch. “She has more feel for the high school athlete rather than the middle school athlete. She just seems to be more well-rounded.”

This weekend, just as it does to everyone else, will put all the work Koch has put in to the test.

Last year, Koch admits, the lights of the Schottenstein Center were a bit too bright for the freshman, at least when compared to the Covelli Centre’s middle school state tournament.

“It’s completely different from Covelli, and I guess I wasn’t even expecting that until I got there, and I was like, ‘Oh, all right. This is insane,'” Koch said. “I made some mental notes to myself on what I should do better next time. Not as much of a wrestling aspect, but knowing what I eat throughout the weekend, making sure I’m staying hydrated, getting enough sleep. Kind of understanding how long a three-day tournament actually is really puts it into perspective.”

Burd, who will be coaching Koch, along with five other state qualifiers, in Columbus this weekend, said having previous experience at the state level should help Koch quite a bit this year.

“You never know how someone’s going to act the first time they’re at the state tournament,” Burd said. “It’s a big arena. It’s an exciting atmosphere. Once you get out there, you walk out of the tunnel and you’re looking up in the stands, the whole goal is to kind of stay focused on the task, which is your match, and try not to get caught up in the lights and the atmosphere.”

“She had never got to compete down there,” he said. “She didn’t know the expectations of the big arena. … I just feel like the second time down there, she’s going to be more prepared.”

Koch is one of two wrestlers in her weight class to enter the state tournament with an undefeated record. The other, Harrison district champion Elizabeth Madison of Loveland, is 36-0 this season and 139-2 in her high school career. Madison won the 170-pound state championship as a freshman and sophomore before losing in the final last year by pinfall to Findlay’s Katie Simmons.

Koch believes that her unbeaten streak, while a possible source of extra motivation for opponents, only helps her in the long run.

“In my personal experience, when people see that, ‘Oh, she’s this-much-and-0, she hasn’t lost yet,’ it’s not about the zero on the other side of the tally,” Koch said. “To me, it’s a mark of my own personal drive because you cannot win every single match doubting yourself. And a big problem with me, my entire wrestling career, is I get in my head, and I lose the confidence I have in myself as a wrestler. Being able to continue to build on that and prove to myself that I am a good wrestler and that I deserve everything I get out of the sport – I guess that zero kind of helps me really picture it.”

To start off her tournament today, Koch will face Delaware Hayes senior Evelyn Krauss (41-6). If victorious, she will advance to the quarterfinals tomorrow and meet either Fostoria’s Ariana Espinosa-Snowden (34-9) or Fairfield’s Lillian Grogan (16-3). A potential matchup with Madison would have to wait until the finals, as they are on opposite sides of the 16-person bracket.

But ultimately, the opponents mean relatively little to Koch, because, with fresh memories of last year’s disappointment, she is simply trying to avoid suffering from the same anguish this time around.

“I just want to go win,” Koch said. “That feeling, that gut-wrenching, knife-twisting feeling of not being good enough is soul-crushing. It’s a very hard feeling to match. It’s like your whole world falls in front of you. And every single time I see pictures or videos – you can ask any of my family – every time I watch my match at states, I cry because it hurt. It hurt. And I don’t ever want that feeling to happen to me again. I just want to go win.”

A CAST OF FALCONS

Koch is one of a half-dozen Fitch wrestlers competing at state this year. She is joined by Chayce Kemble (106 pounds), Yelieishka Perez-Navedo (125), Mya Quarles (140), Stephen Pontius (157) and Noah Bolen (285).

“All the kids are out there wrestling, they’re getting better, they’re wrestling through the positions and not really worried about the score. Or they’re going out there looking to score points. And that’s the difference, I think, from the last few years, is the whole team is out there looking to score, to go out there and win positions, to battle, and that’s a big thing,” Burd said. “You got to be ready to compete and be excited for that competition, and kind of going out there with the desire to score more points than your opponent.

“I’m very thankful to be a part of such a hard-working group, top to bottom – great assistant coaches, great middle school program, youth program had over 150 kids this year. So from top to bottom, our program is doing great. And at the state tournament, we’re literally just looking for these kids to get on the podium and have the opportunity to compete at a high level.”

Koch said last year, when only four girls qualified for the state tournament, Falcon wrestlers who fell short, like Kemble and Pontius, joined the qualifiers in Columbus as spectators.

Now, they will get a shot at participating in the event on the mat.

“We went down with a lot of people last year. Our van was filled,” Koch said. “It was just Burd wanted to bring people for the experience, and he brought down Stephen and Chayce, and he kind of knew how he wanted to give them what he couldn’t give me, and give them kind of a look on what the tournament is. He knew that if they worked hard enough that they would make it this year, and they did. … I think having more people there wrestling is gonna create a really good environment for all of us, and we’re going to be able to lift each other up, and the wins are going to be contagious. Burd said in the room the other day, when one person wins, another’s gonna win. It’s just gonna create this kind of electrical current between all of us that just picks us up and keeps the drive going.”