CLEVELAND — It’s about a 50-minute drive from Kent State’s campus to Rocket Arena. Maybe it takes an hour depending on what traffic is like on I-480.
Still, considering some of the distances traveled to get to the 2026 NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships, what the Golden Flashes’ two qualifiers —165-pound junior Chris Earnest and 197-pound senior Blake Schaffer — had to endure to get there was about the equivalent of just crossing the street.
That it’s both wrestlers’ NCAA debuts only adds to the special nature of the moment.
“Think it means a lot to me and Chris because we’ve both grown up wrestling in Northeast Ohio,” Schaffer told the Beacon Journal after a workout inside Rocket Arena. “And the main goal that we have for Kent State is to get a lot of Northeast Ohio hammers. And by us two representing, saying you can do it from Ohio, you go to a local school and we’re wrestling for the NCAA title in our backyard. So I think it’s awesome.”
It’s not just that Earnest and Schaffer are wrestling for a Northeast Ohio college. They’re also representing Northeast Ohio communities.
Earnest, who transferred this season after two years at Campbell University, grew up in Wadsworth, where he was a high school state champion as a junior. Schaffer originally was from Green — where he placed seventh as a junior in high school — before he went to Louisville for his senior season, helping the Leopards win the Division II state duals championship and placing third individually at the state tournament.
It was then, when they were still in youth or high school wrestling competing against some of the nation’s best talent at that level, that the pair’s journey to the NCAA tournament began.
“I mean, just talking to a couple of my teammates here at Kent State, I know my one teammate, he would go up, he lived in New Mexico,” Earnest told the Beacon Journal. “He would go travel up to Colorado just to go train for like a week or so.
“So maybe for me and Blake, we go travel 10, 20 minutes and we’re at one of the highest level clubs in Ohio. This is one of the hotspots for wrestling in all over the US, so it’s incredible.”
That’s the mission coach Josh Moore brought with him to Kent State when he was hired in 2025. He essentially made the reverse of the journey his two wrestlers made this week, going from Cleveland State University after the school shuttered its own wrestling program as part of budgetary cuts.
Moore, who replaced long-time Kent State coach Jim Andrassey, is hoping the duo are just the start. They’re the first Golden Flashes to qualify for the tournament since Jake Ferri in 2023 and are trying to become the first to place since Kyle Conel, now a volunteer assistant at his alma mater, was third at 197 the last time Cleveland held the event in 2018.
“Our two young men here are both Ohio guys, which makes it even more special,” Moore said. “But this is just the beginning for us. This is not where we want to be long term. But year one for Kent State, not having a national qualifier in three years, they’ve won a few matches, Division I matches, in the last three or four years. And we’ve changed that just by really the culture, believing in my coaching staff.”
The pathway to do so, Moore said, lies in capitalizing on some of the most fertile recruiting territory the sport has to offer. All of that is within not only a 250- or 150-mile radius of the Kent State campus, but within a 40- to 50-mile radius.
That radius includes nationally renowned high school programs such as St. Edward, Perry, Wadsworth and Brecksville. Those are some of the same programs that produced a large percentage of the 28 Ohio natives — tied with New Jersey for second behind Pennsylvania’s 50 — in the field of 330 national qualifiers.
“I mean, Coach Moore and [assistant coaches Devin] Schroeder and Freddie [Garcia] have just done so much for our program,” Earnest said. “And, I mean, like Blake said, we’re trying to build, like, this is just the first step. And I think people on our team realize that and people in Northeast Ohio are starting to realize that maybe we weren’t in our dynasty era a couple years ago, but we’re starting to build up right now.
“And I think it’s turning a lot of people’s heads, and we’re going to do good things.”
Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Browns at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/browns. Follow him on X at @ceasterlingABJ
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Chris Earnest, Blake Schaffer hope NCAA wrestling bids lift Kent State
Reporting by Chris Easterling, Akron Beacon Journal / Akron Beacon Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
