I was thinking about this topic before the Bellarmine dual on Friday. If I did this and then saw App State Wrestling hold onto a 23-19 dual win in Louisville, I’d look really dumb.
Now that I’ve avoided that outcome, I’m gonna write on something that’ll make me sound kinda dumb.
When App State beat Presbyterian 42-0 on Jan. 27, it was noted that it was the Mountaineers’ 18th dual shutout since 2020. Eighteenth. No other NCAA D1 wrestling dual team in America has more.
- Jan. 12, 2020 vs Presbyterian: 48-0
- Jan. 23, 2020 vs Duke: 45-0
- Feb. 8, 2020 vs The Citadel: 44-0
- Feb. 23, 2020 vs VMI: 43-0
- Jan. 17, 2021 vs Bellarmine: 45-0
- Jan. 17, 2021 vs Davidson: 38-0
- Jan. 31, 2021 vs Presbyterian: 54-0
- Jan. 21, 2022 vs VMI: 42-0
- Feb. 20, 2022 vs Presbyterian: 46-0
- Dec. 20, 2022 vs Bellarmine: 39-0
- Dec. 20, 2022 vs Queens: 50-0
- Jan. 20, 2023 vs VMI: 37-0
- Feb. 19, 2023 vs Presbyterian: 43-0
- Feb. 19, 2023 vs Davidson: 47-0
- Jan. 8, 2024 vs Duke: 44-0
- Feb. 15, 2024 vs Presbyterian: 54-0
- Feb. 15, 2024 vs Davidson: 44-0
- Jan. 27, 2025 vs Presbyterian: 42-0
There’s some themes on that list. One is that Duke is not that good. They use to be decent in the late 2010s, but not anymore. The other is that half the list consists of Presbyterian and Davidson. A couple times on the same day!
In fact, that Feb. 15, 2024 double was both on the road. Not a tri-meet, as happens often in collegiate wrestling (A vs B, B vs C and A vs C in a row), but a true day-night doubleheader in Clinton, S.C., and Davidson, N.C. App State, in two different states.
App State started the marathon day, which began with a 6:15 a.m. departure from Boone for the three-hour drive to Clinton, with its national-leading 16th dual shutout since the calendar flipped to 2020. After fighting some heavy interstate traffic to reach Davidson, which is normally two hours from Presbyterian, the Mountaineers added their 17th shutout since 2020 and left the Lake Norman area after 9 p.m. for the two-hour trip home to the High Country.
This dominance over the bottom of the SoCon, where App State wrestles as the Sun Belt doesn’t sponsor wrestling, shows remarkable consistency. You gotta win 10 matches in a row at different weights to post a dual meet shutout.
It’s not like App State Wrestling beats up the minnows and then folds against the top teams. The last time the Mountaineers lost a SoCon dual to a school not named Campbell was Jan. 26, 2016, to Gardner-Webb.
Since that one year where Gardner-Webb shared the wrestling title with App State and Chattanooga, the App State/Campbell wrestling rivalry has been essentially a SoCon regular season title decider. Chattanooga made in a three-way tie in 2019, but the Mocs, once the class of the league, have fallen off in the 2020s.
SoCon Wrestling Regular Season Champions
- 2017: App State
- 2018: App State
- 2019: App State, Campbell and Chattanooga
- 2020: Campbell
- 2021: Campbell
- 2022: App State
- 2023: App State
- 2024: Campbell
Except for 2019 when the three teams all went 1-1 versus each other, the above champions all went undefeated in the SoCon and second place was the other team, who had one loss.
That equates to a 54-4 SoCon dual record for App State in the previous eight years, not counting this year. The Apps are 4-0 in the SoCon so far in 2024-25, with a trip to Gardner-Webb on Tuesday, Feb. 4, who is middle of the pack, and interestingly enough, App State’s last road dual. Then it’s SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! with three home duals in a row to close the dual meet season: Chattanooga, Davidson and Campbell, in that order.
It would be a bit foolish and against the spirit of wrestling to assume the Apps will win until the Campbell match, setting up another SoCon Title Groundhog Day. The best hope is that App State rebounds strong vs Gardner-Webb and Chattanooga this week and head coach JohnMark Bentley says the Bellarmine match was the wakeup call we needed, or some sort of other coach-speak cliche. And despite worst-case scenario planning, I seriously doubt App State loses to Davidson.
You would figure App State and Campbell will continue like Batman and Joker forever. But like when Heath Ledger’s Joker said that line to Christian Bale’s Batman, real life might have other ideas.
Essentially, Campbell is gonna slash athletic scholarships. The wrestling program, which did or almost did fully fund the NCAA’s current limit of D1 wrestling scholarships from 9.9 to as low as 3. Since Campbell is a private school, it doesn’t have to disclose its finances, but it seems they’re choosing to address budget issues by cutting athletic scholarships and “encouraging” scholarship-having wrestlers to leave.
Campbell had funded wrestling big time in the last decade, pushing to hire quality coaches and recruit a lot of wrestlers. Like, more than 50 wrestlers on the roster. You might have noticed the cheering section at Campbell wrestling matches, even away matches. Those aren’t students showing up of the goodness of their hearts. Those are other wrestlers not in the starting lineup.
App State doesn’t fully-fund wrestling. They’ve had around 4-5 full scholarships in recent years, according to Bentley and NCAA survey data.
And just to get it out of the way, Campbell has a negative reputation around the SoCon for the way and manner in which they compete and how their coaches have acted. Good luck getting anyone on record explaining in detail, but Bentley has alluded to it in the past. There was the incident last year where the Camels’ All-American Heavyweight Taye Ghadiali taunted App State’s Jacob Sartori by miming taking a picture of him after pinning him in the dual meet last year, getting penalized a team point that ended up not mattering in the process. This came after Ghadiali learned Sartori had a picture of Ghadiali in his locker as a reminder of the wrestler he wanted to beat.
Note: Ghadiali suffered a season-ending injury in January and is redshirting, thus he won’t partake in the upcoming dual meet
Now that I’ve written a hook to make a number of people angry, now to my bigger point. Anyway, the long and short it is that the two-superpower SoCon could become a single superpower SoCon.
And that would put App State Wrestling in a weird limbo.
The SoCon is one of only seven NCAA Division 1 wrestling conferences. And for years and years, it’s obviously the 5th best NCAA D1 wrestling conference. Just look at how the NCAA divvied up the 330 Wrestling Championship allocations (33 per weight class).
- Atlantic Coast Conference: 28
- Big 12 Conference: 57
- Big Ten Conference: 85
- Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association: 53
- Mid-American Conference: 22
- Pacific-12 Conference: 24
- Southern Conference: 14
- At-Large: 47
Pac-12 Wrestling still soldiers on with four members, and the five Ivy League members of the EIWA broke off to start Ivy League Wrestling this season, so the SoCon might not bring up the rear in automatic qualifiers this season.
Still, the 14 qualifiers means that in many weights, only the SoCon Tournament Champion will automatically make the NCAAs.
App State’s has as many as six wrestlers make the NCAA in a year. Last season there were five wrestlers, with three of them picking up two wins and one wrestler get to the Blood Round, where the winner is an All American and finishes Top 9.
This year might have fewer App State wrestlers in the NCAAs due to injuries and youth, but you never know for sure until the SoCon Championships as some wrestlers have peaked at the end of the season in past years after middling regular seasons.
The NCAAs is the goal. Individual wrestling is king over dual team wrestling. There’s no NCAAs for dual team competition. So while the nation-leading dual team shutout mark is neato, it doesn’t mean a lot in the end.
If your conference is kinda cheeks and there’s not a lot of iron to sharpen your iron automatically built into the schedule, you gotta so find some iron.
As you saw above, App State has wrestled Duke multiple times in recent years. And it’s not just Duke. NC State, North Carolina and Virginia Tech are regulars on the wrestling schedule. Unlike football or basketball, those ACC teams will and do come to Boone. While a team win over the Wolfpack and Hokies, often in the dual team Top 10 with multiple All Americans, has remained elusive in recent years, the Apps have knocked off the Tar Heels away and home in 2022-23 and 2023-24, respectively.
App State Wrestling seems to be steadily growing its stature, utilizing the success of the last decade to remain on top and invest more into the program. A new bleacher section in the building formerly known as Varsity Gym went up this year. There’s a new video board. The locker room got flooded by Helene, but that was a crown jewel when it opened in recent years. This year alone there’s a new home mat and new singlets. Attendance is up with higher ticket prices (plus matches are now on the $30/month FloWrestling dot com, whereas previously they were streamed for free on YouTube/Facebook/Twitch). Hell, Varsity Gym is no longer Varsity Gym.
App State Wrestling is doing well, both at the box office and in the record books. At least, relatively for a collegiate wrestling program not in a major conference. Every once in a while, the Mountaineers get ranked in the Top 25.
For a SoCon wrestling program, that seems to be the ceiling.
A move to another conference wouldn’t automatically mean success. And it’s not like there’s many options. If, for some reason, SoCon Wrestling imploded, you’d think the EIWA or the MAC would call, and maaaaaaybe the ACC?
If you’re looking at higher-ceiling options, the ACC would be great.
Despite having something like 18 full-time members, ACC only has seven wrestling schools – Chapel Hill, Pitt, NC State, Duke, Virginia, Virginia Tech and now Stanford. All of those are full-time league members. That’s a negative against App State as theoretically, the ACC wouldn’t want to add an associate member to a sport where they don’t have any.
For reference, out of the SoCon’s nine wrestling members, only three – VMI, The Citadel and Chattanooga – are full league members.
Associate membership isn’t like full membership. App State Wrestling theoretically could jump ship in an offseason.
NOTE: This is all speculation. I’ve heard nothing to suggest App State Wrestling could be moving conferences.
With the NCAA’s House Settlement opt-in deadline of March 1 upcoming and the vast array of legal and federal hurdles that can and could manifest before then, the landscape of NCAA Men’s Wrestling could change. Heck, the NCAA just approved Women’s Wrestling as a championship sport, another landscape changer.
In the meantime, App State Wrestling is a fun watch. Varsity/Barker makes 500 people sound like 5,000. Everyone should go see a home dual. Another league title would be fun to witness, and championship season is approaching.
pipedreams 
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