In addition to winning the Eaton Invitational for the first time in program history, Ross also crowned multiple district champions (juniors Joseph Jones and Cordell Byrd) and defended its sectional championship with another title. All of those combined to earn Dunn the JournalNews All-Area Wrestling Coach of the Year award.
“It’s been a really good year, but a lot of our success is due to the whole program, not just me,” Dunn said. “We started a youth program several years ago, and just about every one of my juniors wrestled together in that program. They had a great set of coaches at the middle school who prepared (them) for me.”
In addition to winning at Eaton after countless runner-up finishes, Ross also captured first place at the Franklin Invitational and finished second in the Fort Ancient Valley Conference West Division. The Rams are one of only two Division II teams in the league, with the rest being much larger Division I schools.
After winning a second consecutive Division II sectional championship, Ross had the lead after the first day of the district tournament. But a couple of injuries derailed the team’s hopes of winning that event for the first time.
The Rams finished fourth in the 41-team field.
“Wrestling used to be just another activity at Ross, but I feel like we’ve turned it into more of (a) program, rather than just a couple of individuals doing well,” Dunn said. “We’ve gotten to the point where the team can look at being successful together.”
Dunn said one of his proudest moments of the year came during the regular season when a scheduling quirk had the Rams competing in tri-matches on back-to-back nights.
They wrestled poorly in a loss to New Richmond the first night, but bounced back to perform well against a pair of Greater Miami Conference teams the following night. Ross beat Middletown and only lost to Lakota East by one point.
“Yeah, we didn’t beat them, and people made some mistakes here and there, but it was good hard wrestling,” Dunn said. “Everybody was in it, everybody was helping (the) next guy out. We wrestled so much better as a team against them. It was a good thing to see, even in a loss, that our guys were in there fighting and doing (the) best (they) can to help each other out.”
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