By The Ohio Regional Training Center:

The Ohio Regional Training Center bolstered its staff this week with the addition of 2 high profile coaches: Kollin Moore and Coleman Scott. The Ohio RTC, which provides training opportunities for post-grads vying for World and Olympic spots as well as the club in which all current Buckeye wrestlers are members of, also includes the staff of the Ohio State coaches: Tom Ryan, J Jaggers, Bo Jordan and Logan Stieber.

Ohio State Head Coach and RTC staff member Tom Ryan had this to say about the hirings, “We couldn’t be more excited about the addition of Kollin and Coleman to our RTC staff! Obviously the RTC is so critical for the development and attraction to our college program and vice versa. Throwing 2 new high level wrestling minds in Kollin and Coleman into the mix is going to be fun and I know everyone around the program is very excited.”

Kollin Moore, a Buckeye legend via way of 2 Big Ten Titles and 4 NCAA All-American honors, has spent the last 4 years as an Ohio RTC resident athlete and recently announced his retirement from competing. In a natural move he was the first domino to fall for the Ohio RTC staff enhancement this summer.

“We’ve known for a while that keeping Kollin on board would be critical upon his retirement. Guys like him are no brainers really. He was an incredible Buckeye athlete and has gathered so much experience internationally over the past few years. You couple that with his ability to connect with athletes and love for this place and, like I said, it made it priority number 1 for the Ohio RTC this summer.” Said fellow Ohio RTC coach Logan Stieber.

In the more surprising of the 2 new hires comes by the way of Oklahoma. Coleman Scott, an Olympic Bronze Medalist and NCAA Champion from Oklahoma State University, recently served as Oklahoma State Associate Head Coach. Before coaching at Oklahoma State for the 23-24 season he spent 8 years at the helm of the UNC Tar Heels. He will be bringing a wealth of knowledge and expertise to Columbus in his new role as an RTC Coach along with Moore.

Coach J Jaggers had this to say about adding Scott, “I mean…how can the idea of Coleman being here not get you fired up?” It was kind of wild how this came to be. It started as just a loose idea that we kind of thought was a pipe dream but over the past few months, through Coleman getting to know us and this place, along with him taking time off to determine what his next steps were going to be, we were able to work out a deal! I’ve known Coleman for 20 years as we are in same class and we were always wrestling in the same events. He’s someone I’ve always respected and felt was on the same wavelength as I/we were here at Ohio State with his approach to the sport and how to do things the right way. So having the chance to bring him to Columbus and a new dose of creativity/ideas is just super exciting.”

The Ohio RTC has been home to many Senior World Team members, Senior National Team members and age-group level World team members since its inception in 2006. Over the next couple months alone Ohio RTC members Ameer Dhesi will compete in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, Ryder Rogotzke (Greco-Roman) will compete in the Junior World Championships in Spain and Nic Bouzakis will represent team USA at the U23 World Championships in Albania in October.

In what appears to be a youth movement for the Ohio RTC, other members with recent freestyle success include:

Ben Davino - U17 World Team Member

Jesse Mendez - U20 Silver Medalist and current US National Team Member

Sammy Sasso - 2023 US National Team Member

Nick Feldman - U20 World Team Member

Carson Kharchla - 2023 U23 National Runner-Up

“Our goal with these hires is to setup the Ohio RTC for long term success. To be quite honest, and this is usually the case after an Olympic quad, there’s a lot of retirement, movement into coaching for guys, etc. A lot of RTC’s will be a little thinner on post grads this year and we understand we will be. We are ok with that. We believe the wave of athletes we have on our current college roster make us 1 of the more formidable RTC’s in the nation and look to make retaining them upon graduation to chase their Olympic aspirations is priority number 1. Having Kollin and Coleman in place along with the rest of staff just strengthens our position to do so” Said Tom Ryan