To show how meaningless these rankings or unpredictable a season can be, these rankings did not include Seidel or Gaj. Those services will typically use the previous NCAA results as the baseline and are highly conservative ranking true freshmen. As others have mentioned, we should focus primarily on the development throughout the season. For the most part, we saw improvement across most weights. 125 - Eddie did improve this season even if the results were not there or the style finally caught up with him. His defense is elite, and top game is a strength. His style leads him to shying away from being aggressive in neutral and relying too much on his opponent getting nervy...Eddie launching into a successful reattack or winning from top. He is not elite enough in either like a Ridge Lovett to execute that strategy at the NCAAs. 133 - Dillon Campbell was on an All American contention track prior to injury. During his true freshman season, the raw talent was there, but he lacked strength, consistency and rightfully needed a year. He certainly jumped a level this season. Seidel was a freak once he got healthy. There were reports that he was dominating the room prior to injury. He didn't wrestle a full season but there was no regression / freshman hitting the wall. 149 - Gaj just needed college experience to turn those close early season losses into wins. Technically, he is far advanced compared to our freshmen. I worried if he had the strength back in November and thought NN would be this season's choice at 149. Go back at watch the first match (Bucknell Open?) with the Penn AA who is great on top. Gaj could get to his feet quickly on bottom but struggled to get away. During their match on Saturday, Gaj was able to negate if not wash out the Penn kid's advantage on top and force the match to be won in neutral. I learned this season to not get tense when anyone not named Lamer would get a leg, because Gaj is such a good defensive scrambler. 157 - We only had Miller for a year, but he needed match fitness in January to show slight improvement. 174/184 - Both Sergio and Bullock showed major improvement in late-January compared to their effort and results in November/December. Sergio gained confidence throughout the final two months and became more aggressive in attack. He still had trouble finishing but was close to knocking off top 10 kids like Singleton and Facundo. Bullock became more comfortable in his approach especially in ACC season using his top game as a strength and improving his conditioning that was lacking in November through early January. 197 - Sasso improved considerably but could benefit changing his approach mentally. Develop more of an edge. Hokie wrestling put out a video (can't find it this morning) of the guys training at NCAAs before the tournament started. Sonny was asked how he changed his approach to the tournament. To paraphrase, Sonny said something like he didn't really change anything. It was enough of a comment for me to think 'uh oh'. Sonny's future is obviously bright, and he has the ability to still be a multiple AA before his career comes to a close. Program-wide Improvements 1. Recruiting: Our two AAs are true freshmen. Seidel dominated Penn State and Iowa wrestlers on NCAA Saturday. Gaj took down the #2 and 3 seeds at 149. He beat the national champion twice this season. Our staff is doing a hell of a job bringing in hammers to the program who don't need a year to redshirt. Didn't we double the # of Hokies who earned All American honors as true freshmen this past weekend? 2. Riding: the coaches have clearly identified this as a priority. They have not only taught this but also more importantly have recruited kids who were strong on top. Is it a coincidence our best riders (Seidel, Gaj, Bullock, and Eddie) are mostly newcomers to the program? ** Edited by VTDante at 3/23/2026, 10:17:49 AM

So when you looked at that performance, i think we were hopeful for a strong nationals showing, but I'd say we finished at Nationals where a lot of us would have expected at the beginning of the year. On a huge positive note, we had true freshman contributions that were phenomenal and unexpected. Combine that with the incoming class(best one ever for us), I think next year looks extremely positive and the following recruiting class also looks incredibly promising. Plus Caleb drops back into the lineup next year and anytime you can bring back a national champion only helps.

would have been #6. So just a little shy of expectation.

However, if you told me at the beginning of the season we would finish 11th I’d have been happy. Robie has improved the quality of the room. Stanford, a team we beat twice finished 6th in the tournament. It just wasn’t Vt’s day.

You can lose a dual easy with 3 excellent wrestlers that can get 60 points by themselves.

Stanford had a lot of blood round guys that normally wouldn’t score many points perform very well. I’m happy for them.

at Nationals with Jax, Bo, and Melvin. However, there's probably not one division 1 team that they would beat in a dual.