LARAMIE, Wyo. (Nov. 12, 2018) – Heading into his 11th season at the helm of the Wyoming wrestling program,
Mark Branch has experienced a decade's worth of moments since arriving in Laramie. During the offseason, GoWyo.com sat down with Branch as he counted down his top-10 favorite moments over his first 10 years leading the Cowboys. Today, we break down Nos. 5 and 6.
No. 6: Wyoming Crowns Program's First Big 12 Champs
Wyoming enjoyed a historic trip to the Big 12 Championships last March, coming back with the program's first Big 12 individual champs.
Seniors
Archie Colgan and
Bryce Meredith led the team on the final day of the Big 12 Championship, as both became the first Cowboys to earn individual Big 12 titles. Wyoming took fourth-place as a team with 82.5 points. It was the highest finish for the Brown and Gold since joining the Big 12. The Pokes had finished fifth in the previous two tournaments.
It also became the first time since 2014 that UW had two individual conference champions when Ben Stroh (184 pounds) and Shane Woods (197 pounds) were both crowned while Wyoming was a member of the Western Wrestling Conference.
For the second-straight year Meredith faced Oklahoma State's Dean Heil in the 141 pounds Big 12 title match. Heil was able to get a takedown in the opening period, but it wasn't long after Meredith scored a reversal to take a 3-2 lead to the second. After two periods, the bout was tied at three after Heil earned an escape. Meredith out did Heil in the final two minutes with a takedown and escape point and held on for the 6-5 decision to claim the title. It was the second victory over the two-time NCAA Champion this season.
Following the completion of the tournament, Meredith was named the Most Outstanding Wrestler. He is the first Cowboy to earn the award while UW has been a member of the Big 12. Additionally, the last conference champion at 141 pounds for Wyoming was now-Assistant Director of Player Development,
McCade Ford, who claimed the title in 2013.
In his first Big 12 title match at 157 pounds, Colgan came out on top against No. 1 seed Clayton Ream of North Dakota State with a 4-3 decision. After no score in the opening period, Colgan fell behind after releasing Ream, but would score a takedown and take a 2-1 lead to the third. Two more escapes put him on top with the decision to give Wyoming its second conference champion of the tournament.
The last Cowboy to earn an individual conference championship at 157 pounds was Dan Clum in 2006.
From Coach Branch:
"You always attach those moments to something. The crazy thing is, with the recent renovations in our wrestling room we put up new boards in our room that show (team) conference championships, NCAA top-25 finishes, and then individual conference champions. We did all the history, then we obviously put all of the conferences this program has been in, and then we put Big 12 Conference up there and it's empty.
"You start thinking about it and you go 'Gah lee, I have so much history with the Big 12 Conference that I know when we put that up in our room and it's blank you think that if you win a Big 12 Conference championship, you're going to be one of those guys that can contend for an NCAA Championship, and that's not going to contend for an NCAA Championship.' That's not going to come around very often. And then you start going 'Bryce is at one of the toughest weights and doesn't even get in the finals two years ago. And now he's got Dean Heil again—a two-time national champion that he's got to try to figure out how to beat again.'
"You just look and realize it could be something that could be blank in our room for a while. And you know that once you get it done and once you break through then the next guys see it as an easier task. So, it was important to win those Big 12 titles and to have Bryce come through and validate his first victory over Dean, and then to have Archie come back and beat a guy that he had never beaten—and I don't know exactly how many times that they had wrestled, but it was a bunch. For him to pull off that upset and to win a Big 12 Championship really solidified our program and our future in the Big 12.
"Like I said, you attach it to something because now you have those names on the wall, and every day our guys can run by that and see that it's been done and it's going to be done again. You want to get that taken care of pretty quick because it's competitive, and there are probably some programs that won't see that for a while."
No. 5: Cowboys Storm Back to Knock off No. 10 Oklahoma
After falling into an early hole, the Cowboy wrestling team clawed its way back from a seven-point deficit to claim a 25-13 dual win over Oklahoma in December of 2012.
Looking at a 10-3 deficit after three matches, the 20th-ranked Cowboys (2-1) cranked it up and went on a 22-3 run over the next seven matches to beat No. 10 OU (2-1) for only the second time in series history. The win gave Wyoming head coach
Mark Branch his 50th dual victory in his fifth season, becoming just the fifth coach in UW history to achieve 50 or more wins.
Action began at 125 pounds as sophomore Tyler Cox took on Oklahoma's Kyle Garcia. Cox entered the final period down 6-5 but scored four points in the final session to earn the 9-6 decision to give Wyoming the 3-0 lead.
The Sooners got on the board when UW senior Kasey Garnhart took on 10th-ranked Cody Brewer at 133 pounds, and Brewer secured a 16-6 major decision. That gave OU the 4-3 edge, and the Sooners added to that when Wyoming senior
McCade Ford took on No. 1 Kendric Maple of OU in the 141-pound match. Maple's pin at 1:29 gave OU a 10-3 lead after three bouts.
But shortly after, Wyoming sophomore Brandon Richardson got the biggest win of his career to that point, beating No. 6 Nick Lester in a 4-3 decision at 149 pounds to draw Wyoming to within four points. Sophomore Andy McCulley then continued the hot start to his season, beating ninth-ranked Matt Lester at 157 pounds in an 8-1 decision to make it 10-9. McCulley, ranked 12th by Amateur Wrestling News, won his fourth match of the year over a ranked wrestler, and now has 14 total wins.
Oklahoma padded its lead after sixth-ranked Bubby Graham won an 8-5 decision over UW sophomore Dakota Friesth at 165 to give OU a 13-9 advantage. But Cowboy senior L.J. Helbig got the momentum back, beating Matt Reed in a 5-2 decision at 174 pounds to cut the OU edge to 13-12. Sophomore Shane Woods tacked on three more UW points with a 4-2 decision over Greg Wilson, and Wyoming reclaimed the lead for good.
UW earned bonus-point wins when fourth-ranked senior Alfonso Hernandez won the 197-pound bout in a 19-6 major decision and redshirt freshman
Tanner Harms pinned OU's Keldrick Hall to end the night.
From Coach Branch:
"Looking back, I don't know that I even knew at the time—or remember now—that it was my 50
th win. They were a really good team. They were a pretty heavy favorite. Then they came out and we looked intimidated.
"Sometimes as a coach you don't like those timeouts and sometimes you do, and there was a timeout. Being in a different venue, we didn't have a locker room to go back to so we went behind the stands and had a 10 minute timeout. We had a little eye-opening meeting that worked. I was pretty disappointed with the way we started that dual so I was pretty hot and we got their attention pretty quick. We got their attention and in the second half of that dual and just completely flipped the script, which is hard to do when you've lost momentum in wrestling.
"It was just a great win, and at the time was one of the biggest upsets we'd had as a program. And then, as an Oklahoma State alum, there's not a lot of love lost between myself and OU, so that's always one of my favorite victories if we can beat them.
"Ark City is 10 miles from my home town. I grew up wrestling a lot of Ark City kids and competing against them and competing there so I had a lot of people I knew from there and a lot of connections. The retired official Jim Ramirez, who was once the mayor of Ark City, was really working hard to get wrestling at Cowley County Community College in Ark City. So he really spearheaded the whole thing.
"He was friends with Mark Cody at the time, who was the head coach at the University of Oklahoma. With it being close to my hometown he really created the idea and got OU on board. I jumped on it immediately because it was an opportunity to wrestle really close to where I grew up, and then you take a dual out of a school's home venue, I don't think that's going to hurt you either. It was a great idea and really turned out to be a memorable night."
