The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Former Elyria High wrestler at top of game
Former Elyria wrestler Erik Darmadast making mark at Cornell as the sophomore is 24-6.
Erik Burnett needs almost no time to think of his favorite Ben Darmstadt memory.
“Oh yeah, I have one for sure,” Burnett said, leaning back in the chair in his office.
More than seven years ago, Darmstadt was an unproven 120-pound freshman on Elyria’s wrestling team. While he’d finished third in the state junior high tournament the year prior, Burnett and his coaching staff tried not to expect too much out of the lanky, raw freshman. To make matters worse, the Pioneers opened the season at the Cincinnati Archbishop Moeller tournament — one of the toughest tournaments in Ohio. Darmstadt had barely hit puberty, yet he was getting his introduction to high school wrestling against three of the best 120-pound wrestlers in the state.
As he stepped to the mat, Burnett noticed that it looked as if Darmstadt’s opponent was holding back laughter. Burnett and his coaching staff braced for a blowout.
And there was a blowout, only it wasn’t the way anyone expected. Darmstadt blew the doors off his opponent, with every takedown and scramble working perfectly. Darmstadt walked off the mat a 15-0 winner via tech fall while his opponent walked off the mat with his headgear sideways and a bloody nose.
“At 197 pounds I have way more energy and have been able to wrestle a lot more like myself. It’s kind of felt like two separate seasons.”
— Cornell wrestler and Elyria graduate Ben Darmstadt
“You knew he was going to be good. You just didn’t know when,” Burnett recalled. “That was when I learned he was good right away.”
Fast forward to this year. Darmstadt is treating the entire Ivy League like they’re that chuckling wrestler from his freshman year. The Cornell sophomore has a 24-6 record with 13 pins and has emerged as one of the best 197-pound collegiate wrestlers in the country. His next test will be the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association tournament March 6-7.
Darmstadt’s success is even more impressive considering what he’s been through over the past two years.
Darmstadt burst on to the college wrestling scene two years ago as a freshman, going 34-4 along with a 14-0 record in dual meets. After qualifying for
the NCAA tournament, he stumbled in his last three matches of the season and finished in sixth place. Initially, Darmstadt chalked his late season struggles to fatigue. That hypothesis changed quickly, however, as he found out after the season that he suffered a pars fracture in his L5 vertebrae at some point during the season. For most of the season, Darmstadt wrestled with a broken back and barely missed a beat.
After finding out about the injury, Darmstadt decided to sit out last season. While he missed wrestling, the time away from the slog of the season allowed him to focus on the nuances of his wrestling style.
“(I spent that time off) focusing on incorporating a bunch of new techniques into my game,” he said. “It also gave me more time to get my body right and just focus on wrestling.”
After spending last season rehabbing, Darmstadt opened this year at 184-pounds, a change due both to the weight loss
from his injury combined with Max Dean — the big Red’s normal 184-pounder — taking an Olympic redshirt year.
A month into the season, however, Darmstadt knew something needed to change. After Cornell wrestled in the Cliff Keen Invitational in Las Vegas on Dec. 7, Darmstadt made the switch back to 197 pounds.
“When I was down at 184 pounds my legs had very minimal strength and would go out on me pretty quickly,” he said. “At 197 pounds I have way more energy and have been able to wrestle a lot more like myself. It’s kind of felt like two separate seasons.”
After not wrestling at 197 pounds for nearly 18 months, it would have been understandable if it took him some time to find his rhythm. Instead, he went 3-0 at 197 pounds at Cornell’s dual the next weekend.
“When he went to 184 pounds, he couldn’t lift as much as he was able to before,” Burnett said. “It’s not
about avoiding any particular people, it’s about picking the weight class where you think you’re going to be able to do the best. Well, as he got healthier and was able to do more, he of course got bigger and then making that weight was taking the fun out of the sport for him.”
Burnett is no stranger to having to see Darmstadt work to cut weight. After the strong start to his freshman season at Elyria, Darmstadt finally began to hit his growth spurt halfway through the year. After that all the time he would have spent more on his technique was skill was spent focusing on cutting and maintaining weight.
“Midway through his freshman year, we had to make it all about weight cutting, and because of that he didn’t really get any better until the offseason,” Burnett said. “He didn’t have a great state tournament. But he stayed committed to wrestling in the offseason. But in his freshman
year I was worried because he wasn’t having any fun.”
It didn’t take long for that fun to come back. While Darmstadt kept growing, it just so happened that every growth spurt came in a different year. After wrestling at 120 his freshman year, Darmstadt wrestled at 152 pounds his sophomore year, 182 pounds his junior year and 195 pounds his senior year.
“As high school progressed, I just kept growing and changing weight classes,” Darmstadt said.
As Darmstadt grew, so did his skill on the mat. From the countless hours he spent studying film of college wrestlers to the impromptu scrambling matches he’d have with teammate JT Brown at practice, it became clear to everyone involved in Elyria’s program that Darmstadt loved wrestling just as much as it loved him.
While his time at Elyria didn’t coincide with any of the current Pioneers wrestlers, Darmstadt’s legacy lives on at every practice. At
some point during his time with Elyria, Darmstadt started having the team say “Deliver March 15th” as they broke the huddle down after practice, a phrase the team still says.
“Ben would give his time,” Burnett said. “He’d come into the youth program and mess around and whatnot. The kids knew him, it wasn’t like he was some superstar high school wrestler.”
Despite being on the way to being one of the biggest college wrestlers in the country, Darmstadt still keeps in touch with his teammates from Elyria, as rarely a day goes by when he’s not texting someone from his high school team. A few days before the sectional tournament, he exchanged texts with Burnett. After some catching up, Burnett texted Darmstadt reminding him to keep having fun with wrestling.
“For sure that’s the key,” Darmstadt texted back. “I’m usually wrestling the best when I’m enjoying it.”