Kent State wrestling’s Colin McCracken beat Edinboro University’s Dylan Reynolds, ranked 19th in the country, in the 197 weight class despite dropping the match to the Fighting Scots. 

The Flashes went 2-1 at Saturday’s home opener, beating Ashland University and Mercyhurst University at the Memorial Athletic and Convocation Center.

The Flashes started off slow in the first match, losing 29-6 to Edinboro University. The team picked it up with a 37-6 win over Ashland and a 52-0 stomping of Mercyhurst.

“We didn’t look very good in the first match. We didn’t cut our weight the right way, eat the right foods and prepare ourselves to wrestle at a high level. There were three matches that we lost in the third period because we just weren’t in as good shape as them,” said Coach Jim Andrassy on the loss to Edinboro. “I think our guys are in good shape, they just mismanaged how they cut their weight and they used a lot of energy that they shouldn’t be using to cut weight rather than worrying about wrestling.”

McCracken finished 3-0 on the day against the three schools.

“I think I really kept the pace up and was pushing my opponents the whole seven minutes and getting them tired during all three matches,” he said. “I was just getting to my shots and scoring points.”

Redshirt freshman Brady Chrisman also went 3-0 for the day. He was the only other Flash to secure points against Edinboro in the defeat.

“I kept a good pace and I was aggressive. I looked for my own stuff and tried to wrestle my match. There’s a couple technical things that I could clear up, but we’ll work on those in practice and just try to get better every day,” Chrisman said. 

Andrassy was impressed with the performance of true freshman Earl Blake.

“I think that Earl Blake as a true freshman wrestled really hard and showed a lot of promise. If you watch his second or third match he wrestled a lot better than he did his first match,” Andrassy said. “Learning how to win as a true freshman is a hard thing at this level and he made some mistakes in his first match that he didn’t make in his second and third.”

While the Flashes came out of the day with two wins and only one loss, Andrassy sees things for the team to improve on.

“Going forward we have to do little things better as far as cutting our weight right, preparation and conserving energy,” Andrassy said. “At the end of the day if someone is better than you they’re better than you, but there are things you can control.”

The team has its next competition Nov. 9 at Appalachian State’s Mountaineer Invitational in Boone, North Carolina.

Contact Aidan Coyne at [email protected].