Oak Park Named FloWrestling National High School Team Champions

Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s not.

Determining who ‘deserves’ to be the National Team Champion in high school wrestling over the course of the season requires taking in a myriad of factors. With two (dual and tournament) formats, travel restrictions, injuries, defections, etcetera, etcetera, the formula for a team title is a wholly imperfect.

But it’s not, I repeat, NOT, ‘MYTHICAL’.

There’s a right answer, and this year, that answer is the Oak Park - River Forest Huskies.

The road that led us here is thus:

St. Paris - Graham won the Ironman where the Top Four (SPG, OPRF, Blair, and Wyoming Seminary) were present. Blair was 2nd, OPRF was 3rd.

Thereafter, Blair had two of their key pieces, Chaz Tucker (injured) and Mason Manville (Greco training), unavailable. However, that didn’t prevent them from beating an at-full-strength SPG in a dual.

So to clarify, the team that won Ironman lost to a team that took second despite the team that took second missing two Top 5 wrestlers.

What’s that mean? It means things change.

How did that happen? Different day, different results.

When Blair beat SPG, three wrestlers (Zach Sherman, Requir Ven Der Merwe, and Michael Monica) beat SPG Falcons (Mitch Moore, Eli Stickley, and Brent Moore) that finished ahead of them at Ironman.

The significant, but also roundly overlooked import of the result is that you can over-perform and under-perform.

The Falcon team that day was not good enough to beat Blair or OPRF if Ironman were wrestled again (with all moving parts). And that’s not conjecture or projection; the SPG constituents were not as good in January (the Blair dual) as they were in December (Ironman). It also highlight the glaring discrepancy in dual vs. tournament format. SPG was, like most pundits agreed to prior to the season, a much better tournament team that would, with question marks at the upper weights, have issues with the Top 10-ish teams in duals.

So, Blair beats Graham, they go #1. No brainer.

About a month later, when Wyoming Seminary beat (and almost doubled up) Blair in a dual, the real drama began. Who’s the nation’s #1 team?

Logically, with both SPG and Blair taking the most recent losses, the candidates were Seminary and OPRF.

Analyzing the seasons and personnel of Seminary and OPRF netted this:

With a +39 over Seminary at Ironman, and, on paper, the most formidable dual squad in the country, OPRF was the choice. Both saliently (OPRF owned decisively the only head-to-head) and hypothetically (a 7-6 split in a dual for the Huskies on paper), the needle tilted to Illinois.

OPRF would go on to thrash everyone they faced, including #5-Clovis. And consider this: Clovis managed less wins (5) against OPRF, than they did state finalist (6) in the single-class California, unanimously considered a Top 5 state.

OPRF was the last team standing, and their abilities in either individual tournaments or dual competition was not in question.

When Seminary, who was the only other team you could, with a straight face, consider for the #1 spot, fell to Blair at National Preps, you could carve it in stone.

1. OPRF 2. Blair 3. Wyoming Seminary 4. Graham 5. Clovis

Frankly, I can’t wrap my brain around, or justify, any other permutation.

Congratulations to the 2015 National Champions, Oak Park - River Forest, Illinois.