Wrestlers to Look Out For in the 2021 Recruiting Class

Flo came out with their “2021 Big Board” where they rank the recruits from that class. There are several prospects pretty high on that list that Cowboy fans should put on their radar. I thought I’d touch on it a bit here.

No. 7: Victor Voinovich — 152

Voinovich is out of Brecksville, Ohio and is an absolute stud. He could be a four-time Ohio State champ, which is very rare. He’s every bit of that No. 7 overall ranking and maybe even more, a very sound, very good wrestler.

Voinovich is projected as a college 157 or 165. You’d think Ohio State would have a reasonable shot with their top in-state guy, right? According to Flo Ohio State won’t likely have scholarship money available around his weight. They say tOSU’s money will basically already be allocated to others around that size. With that, it opens the door for other schools to have a shot. It looks like Chris Perry’s had a connection with Voinovich for a while. That could be a very good thing for the Cowboys.

@AcollicA and @chrisperry184 working hard this summer to coach the next generation of wrestlers pic.twitter.com/Ba6WbGIzGL

— OK State Mat-Maids (@OKStateMatMaids) June 16, 2016

Here’s Chris with him and Billy Simpson, probably one of the toughest dudes to ever set foot in the OSU room, along with Dustin Plott, one of the top recruits in the 2020 class.

Great week of wrestling at Oklahoma State pic.twitter.com/rIE4OaM2vx

— Victor Voinovich (@VictorV_3) August 23, 2015

No. 13: Kyle Haas — 182

Kyle Haas is out of Maize, Kansas. A Folkstyle National Champ this year, and a guy that’s won a lot of other big tournaments in his wrestling career, Haas is a very, very good wrestler in his own right. He’s from Wichita, so geography definitely helps. It also helps that his stepbrother Tyler Caldwell is on the staff at OSU. I would say Kyle is about as close to a lock as the Cowboys could hope for.

I did speak with one of our former beat writer’s Hayden Barber, who now covers high school sports in the Wichita area. We talked about Kyle and Hayden did mention that Stanford had reached out to him. So it sounds like he’s a pretty sharp kid. It’s hard to see an Iowa or something swooping in and pulling him away, but there is life after wrestling and if the kid can go to a Stanford type school that could potentially sway him away. Otherwise, you have to feel very confident about the prospects of Haas being a Cowboy.

No. 19: Tate Picklo — 152

Picklo’s very good. A Fargo national champ, an in-state kid, and naturally you have to think the Cowboys will try to keep him in the state. I don’t know Picklo or his family personally, but do have some “ins” with people close to him and they speak the absolute world of this guy.

Really say he’s just as good a kid as he is a wrestler, and he’s a very good wrestler, so that’s saying a lot. When I asked them about OSU’s chances their response was “OSU is definitely in the mix”. Picklo’s dad was a coach at OU and here he speaks pretty highly of the Oklahoma RTC, so it may be a Bedlam battle for his services.

No. 29: Carter Young — 113

Young dropped down the rankings a bit from last year, Flo actually says they attribute it to recency bias from Fargo. Saying basically his finish there dropped him down a bit and otherwise, he would be higher. Young is about as close to a lock as Haas. Deep, deep ties to the Cowboys and the Fix family. His parents are actually sitting front row in the header photo on this story. His finish at Fargo wasn’t quite what he usually does, but he’s still a very good wrestler that we could definitely see climb this list in the future.

Ultimately, OSU has some pretty solid ins with this class and that’s not even mentioning other Oklahoma kids Eli Griffin and Cougar Anderson, and any other wrestlers the Cowboys may be able to tap into for this class. Still, a few years out but could be a pretty solid one for OSU.