Cowboy Youth Movement: Blue-Chip Freshmen Help Reload Oklahoma State Lineup

STILLWATER — A few days out from the Cowboys’ season-opening dual and David Taylor is still keeping his lineup plans close to the vest, but one thing is for certain, this will be a younger group of Cowboys than Taylor’s first squad.

Oklahoma State opens its season against Stanford at 7 p.m. Friday in Gallagher-Iba Arena. A good chunk of last season’s lineup finished out their eligibility. Reece Witcraft. Caleb Fish, Cam Amine, DJ Hamiti, Dustin Plott, Luke Surber and Wyatt Hendrickson are all gone.

Taylor got some experience out of the portal in guys like Richard Figueroa, Casey Swiderski and Alex Facundo, but he also injected his team with a lot of talented youngsters.

LaDarion Lockett, Landon Robideau and Sergio Vega are all true freshmen expected to compete for a spot in the Cowboy lineup this season. Those three were all in the top seven of Flo’s big board for the 2025 recruiting class. On top of that, redshirt freshmen Zack Ryder (a Penn State transfer) and Cody Merrill are also expected to compete for spots in the lineup.  Ryder was the No. 5 wrestler on Flo’s big board for the 2024 class, while Merrill came in at No. 12.

“My philosophy is to recruit and develop,” Taylor said a few weeks back. “That’s what I want to do. Things evolve and to be competitive at the highest level, you have to stay up with the times, but I think we’re bringing guys in that fit what we want to do, the way we want to wrestle, the mentality that it’s gonna take to be successful. That’s our plan.”

So, OSU could go from having seven seniors in its lineup to five freshmen.

That means that Taylor, in just his second year as a Division-I coach, has to take a bit of a different approach in his coaching.

“It is different,” Taylor said Wednesday. “Last year, having such a veteran team, there’s a lot of things that, they’ve been through it. They know. They’ve made adjustments. They’ve been in college for four or five years.

“This is a young team. Almost half of our team was in high school last year. Just that transition from high school to college within itself, there’s a lot of things that go into that. Then you throw in the opportunity to potentially be wrestling in your first match, we just make sure we’re communicating — probably overcommunicating with them. We just told them, ‘Hey, we want to set you up for success. We’re not here to set you up for failure. We’re here to set you up for success and part of that is just making sure everything in your life is in check.’ That’s how we do special things is making sure everything in our life is done the way we want to go wrestle.”

The change in team makeup also means some internal leadership will be developed. Taylor said he’s spoken to the team about being authentic in leadership, meaning leadership might be different person to person.

Troy Spratley, a redshirt junior, has been one of the younger guys on his first two OSU teams, but after a second-place finish last season and a lot of new faces in the room, Taylor said he’s leaning on Spratley to help lead in his own way.

“This group’s doing a really good job,” Taylor said. “It’s a fun group to be around and just making a lot of progress. I think these kids are coming out of high school, they’re pretty talented and skilled and starting to put things together pretty quickly. It is a long season, but I know a lot of guys are really hungry to get out there and wrestle.”