Moments after winning a national championship, Cole Ritter wanted to do one thing.
That was to watch his teammate, Ryan Herman wrestle for a national championship for Maryville at the Division II finals.
The Adrian native got his national championship medal on the podium and was then sequestered in a room for a drug test in the aftermath of the awards.
He was not able to have a phone or any technology to do the test.
Ritter noticed a TV was on showcasing the finals but he couldn’t hear it. So he asked a NCAA official if he could watch the match.
Yes and no.
He could watch a match that he could hear but only under the supervision of a chaperone.
So, he was taken into the athlete area and could watch Herman’s match — which he won.
“Just know that I had one, the pressure was off and I could just root for my teammate,” he said. “I was going crazy down there. I think a lot of the UCM guys probably saw me down there pretty fired up.”
For the record, Ritter passed the test and was finally able to celebrate the national title — at 174 pounds — with friends and family.
He entered the tournament as a No. 5 seed and won all four matches — an 8-0 major decision, a 4-1 overtime win versus Sevriano Garza of Ashland and then a 10-6 decision in the semifinals facing Lawson Losee of Upper Iowa.
Losee beat Ritter, 8-5, in OT on Feb. 16.
In the finals, Ritter beat Jacobi Deal of Nebraska-Kearney, 5-1.
“Everybody wants to win a national title, but the most enjoyment is just chasing it all,” Ritter said.
He said the tides turned when Coach Charlie Sheretz took over the program in July of 2023.
However, there was probably a little unknown early on. Ritter said he knew of Whitfield’s success under Sheretz but he was going to give it a chance.
“I think he’s a skeptic by nature, and he was a little harder than [others] on the way that I wanted things to go things and what I wanted them to do the first semester,” Sheretz said. “It was a little rough.”
Ritter said the relationship with the coach took a turn at the 45th Annual Midwest Classic. He said he and Sheretz got on the same page.
Ritter didn’t place but there was some good things that Sheretz saw and tried to point out the positives. Then, a trip that featured three duels in against Quincy, Indianapolis and Central Missouri.
Ritter was battling an illness but Sheretz sent him out to wrestle.
“I told him we didn’t drive a 16-hour round trip for you to f***ing sit in the stands in front of your team and that was kind of defining moment,” the coach said. “He had a rough day but he got through it. In my mind, that was a really critical moment. He could’ve thought he’s an *sshole, OK, but he did what the man says.”
Ritter moved from 165 to 174 and the change in wrestling and not cutting weight benefited him too.
That came after a loss on Nov. 9 to Hunter Jump from Central Oklahoma.
“He started to excel and started to pick off good people and just got better and better and better,” Sheretz said of Ritter. “He had a hiccup in the middle of the season where he tore a hamstring during a match, but except for that, he was just constantly improving and doing a great job of training hard and believing in himself more and more every day.
“I had a bunch of guys that really didn’t believe in themselves when I got there and they were very comfortable being mediocre. You know, coming where I came from, I wasn’t. I made it crystal clear, repeatedly. He was a pleasure in the offseason, training hard and buying in and working toward getting a higher affinity.”
Ritter was a four-time medalist in high school and won a title as a senior. He left with the all-time win record of 170 and led in takedowns, pins, and win percentage. He was a state champion and a third-place finisher three times.
