OSU Wrestling Signee Cael Hughes Earns Dave Schultz High School Excellence Award

Oklahoma State wrestling signee Cael Hughes keeps picking up honors.

A four-time state champion at Stillwater High School and valedictorian of his class, Hughes earned the Junior Hodge Trophy last month, given to the to the nation’s most dominant wrestler. Then Wednesday, Hughes earned the Dave Schultz High School Excellence Award, an award that recognizes and celebrates the nation’s most outstanding high school senior male wrestlers for their excellence in wrestling, scholastic achievement, citizenship, and community service.

Hughes becomes the fourth* OSU signee to win the award, joining Coleman Scott (2004), Chance Marsteller (2014) and Daton Fix (2017). Steve Mocco also won the award in 2001, but he transferred to Oklahoma State from Iowa.

The wrestling part of the award is easy to see with Hughes given his four state titles (just the 45th four-time state champ in the state’s history) and the fact that he went 140-0 with the Pioneers, but he also stacks up in the community service portion of the award.

Hughes volunteered at Stillwater Medical, Stillwater High’s student-led Stillwater Makes A Changer, with Special Olympics and more.

“Receiving the national Dave Schultz High School Excellence Award is an incredible honor that I am very thankful for,” Hughes said in OSU’s release. “I have always looked up to athletes like Dave Schultz, who show excellence on and off the mat, and it has always been a priority of mine to do the same. I want to thank God and my family for blessing me and helping me achieve my dreams. I will continue to give my all to this sport that I love and when I complete my wrestling career I have every intention of giving back to the sport that made me who I am today.”