COLUMBUS — Mogadore is a football town and Dylan Benedum is a heck of a football player.
That said, the Wildcats senior spent a lot of his offseason thinking about wrestling.
District blood round losses tend to do that to a wrestler. There are few worse feelings in high school sports than falling one win shy of a trip to the Schottenstein Center. In a sense though, Benedum’s district blood round loss led to his third-place finish at state this season.
“That Saturday when I lost in the blood round, I started thinking about this day [at state] last year, and this was just the whole point, come down here and make a name for myself,” Benedum said. “It might not be the state championship, but it’s third place. That means I went out in consolations and I won out there, and again I’m proud of myself that I can prove to myself that I could do this.”
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Benedum thus continued a recent tradition of Wildcats’ success at the 215-pound weight class. Three years prior to Benedum’s run through the consolation bracket, his former teammate Tyler Shellenbarger won a state title at that same weight class. The year before, Mogadore’s Michael Lowe earned state runner-up honors at 215.
“It means a lot because down in youth I was on the team with those two guys and I always really looked up to those two,” Benedum said. “My freshman year [was] when Tyler Shellenbarger was down [in Columbus]. That was the year. I looked up to him a lot. So this year I came in 215, that was the goal is I saw what those guys did and I want to try to do just as good as they did, and again I’m more than satisfied with how I came out here and did this weekend.”
Mogadore senior Dylan Benedum keeps bouncing back
Benedum felt like he was a state-caliber wrestler as a junior. He came close, too, before falling in the blood round to Tuslaw’s Guhner Eberhardt.
Benedum wasn’t discouraged.
If anything, he was fired up to get back on the mat.
“I wanted to come to this year immediately,” Benedum said. “I know the offseason I spent a lot of time lifting and focusing on myself and reflecting on last year and stuff I needed to fix.”
Bulking up was part of the equation.
“I was probably walking around last year a lot around 200, where it wasn’t ideal to be wrestling this big a weight class at that small of a weight,” Benedum said. “There were a lot of times in matches last year, I’d get in scrambles with guys and stuff would just go their way because they had that extra 10 pounds.”
Benedum ended his senior football season at 220, putting him in prime position to drop a quick five pounds and eventually come into wrestling season right around 211.
“You can tell he hit the weight room a little bit heavier this past year and he gained some weight,” Wildcats coach Duane Funk said. “Last year, we were a light 215. This year, we were a little bit better and more filled out.”
Benedum’s comeback season included an early confidence boost against the wrestler who ended his junior year as he pinned Eberhardt at the Waterloo Division III Classic. Benedum later added a Portage County Tournament title.
“Every tournament this year, he’s placed in,” Funk said. “He’s got a tough schedule to prepare for this and he came down there and he brought it.”
Everything about Benedum’s senior season suggested he’d be a hammer in the postseason. Still, there was plenty the senior had to battle through, starting with Independence, where he experienced district heartbreak a year before. This year’s Independence adversity included a brutal draw as he had to go against state champion Danny Zmorowski in the semifinals. After falling to Zmorowski, it was back to the blood round for Benedum. This time, he prevailed with a third-period pin to cement his first state berth. The Mogadore senior had earned the chance to wrestle on a brand-new stage, but Funk wasn’t concerned about nerves.
“He’s wrestled OACs,” Funk said. “He’s been at the Covelli Centre up in Youngstown. Don’t get me wrong, this is way bigger, but kind of the same type of concept. He’s been in championships there, so he was basically built for this.”
Benedum had to bounce back in Columbus as well after suffering an overtime loss in the state quarterfinals. As good as Benedum is at bouncing back, the senior acknowledged it was far from easy.
“When I first lost, I went over there and I was giving my dad and Coach Funk kind of an earful about how I really wanted to win that match,” Benedum said. “I wanted to get into semis, but the coaching staff and all those guys, everyone did a great job of keeping my head in it, telling me just come back, wrestle it out, that I can hang with these guys.”
Bouncing back isn’t easy at state.
Nothing is easy at state.
Benedum, after his first state loss, immediately had to face Springfield Catholic Central senior Brody Adams, a two-time state qualifier. Adding to the challenge, Benedum, who likes to strike early, just missed a takedown late in the first period, kicking Adams down a fraction of a second too late. Benedum calmly bounced back by choosing neutral, then bull-rushing Adams for a takedown 35 seconds into the second period en route to a 6-0 win.
“When I didn’t get the takedown, it was very frustrating, but I just knew I had to kind of keep my composure and stay calm,” Benedum said. “If I wanted to win that match, I couldn’t let that be a big factor of it all.”
In his final match, Benedum showed poise as well. After a scoreless first period against West Liberty-Salem sophomore Sam Bradford, the second was pure chaos. Benedum appeared to have a shot at Bradford’s leg, but Bradford fell over his back and tried to get at the Mogadore senior from underneath in an unusual scramble.
A particularly unusual scramble at 215 pounds.
A scramble that Benedum won en route to three points and ultimately third place in the state.
“At 215, you don’t scramble a lot really at all,” Benedum said. “So I guess when I got into that point, I just went back [to] I’ve wrestled for so long, just had to trust what I know. I just stayed calm, worked through it, got in the way, got behind and then started working for the pin.”
Benedum had his share of setbacks over the course of a year, starting with that blood round loss in Independence back in 2025. As for 2026, he had a difficult draw at district and an overtime loss at state. He had a close call against him and an unusual scramble in the consolation bracket.
Benedum kept bouncing back — all the way to a bronze medal.
“It’s the state tournament and some calls go some ways, some calls go the other, just like any other tournament really,” Funk said. “You just got to keep your composure, stay focused on the objective and keep moving forward.”
Contact Jonah L. Rosenblum at jrosenblum@recordpub.com and follow him on Twitter at @JLRSports.
This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Bounce-back king, how Mogadore’s Dylan Benedum took third at state
Reporting by Jonah Rosenblum, Ravenna Record-Courier / Record-Courier
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