WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue Wrestling will open preseason with its annual Wrestle Offs open scrimmage on Saturday.
In a friendly Team Gold vs. Team Black dual, 10 matches will take place inside Holloway Gymnasium beginning at 1 p.m. ET. Admission is free for all.
The team this year features a wealth of depth, and each match could play a significant role in determining who will get the starting nod at each weight through much of the season ahead.
Wrestling alumni Kendall Coleman and Max Lyon will serve as head coaches for the two squads. Coleman will head up Team Black as Lyon leads Team Gold.
| TEAM GOLD (HC: Max Lyon) | WEIGHT (lbs) | TEAM BLACK (HC: Kendall Coleman) |
| Jacob Macatangay | 125 | Isaiah Quintero |
| Isaiah Schaefer | 133 | #19 Blake Boarman |
| #18 Greyson Clark | 141 | Jaden Reynolds |
| Gavin Brown | 149 | Wyatt Krejsa |
| Isaac Ruble | 157 | Stoney Buell |
| Adrian Pellot | 165 | #3 Joey Blaze |
| #21 Brody Baumann | 174 | Aidan Costello |
| #23 James Rowley | 184 | Quinn Herbert |
| Noah Weaver | 197 | #26 Ben Vanadia |
| Dominic Burgett | 285 | Tyson Russell |
PREVIEW
Head coach Tony Ersland, in his 12th season at the helm of the program, leads the Boilermakers into action once again. His team is coming off its best finish at the NCAA Championships (13th) since 1992, and the squad returns all but one starter from last season’s lineup.
Matt Ramos is the lone departure, though he remains in the team’s corner as its newest full-time assistant coach.
Purdue enters the season at No. 22 in the InterMat tournament rankings. The team consists of six former NCAA qualifiers and seven nationally ranked wrestlers, the program’s most in the InterMat preseason rankings since 2021.
Joey Blaze (165 lbs) checks in at No. 3 in the country in his new, more natural weight class. He is coming off one of the most impressive NCAA tournament runs in school history as a sophomore when he became Purdue’s youngest national finalist in at least 75 years. Despite wrestling with a taped-up knee at a slimmer weight than his frame would suggest, he cruised all the way to the national title match as the No. 8 seed at 157, upsetting No. 1 Tyler Kasak (Penn State) along the way.
Familiar faces Greyson Clark (No. 18, 141 lbs), Brody Baumann (No. 21, 174 lbs), James Rowley (No. 23, 184 lbs), Ben Vanadia (No. 26, 197 lbs) and Hayden Filipovich (No. 32, 285 lbs) all carry career-high rankings into the season. Chattanooga transfer Blake Boarman (No. 19, 133 lbs) is a newcomer to watch; he spent the last four years with the Mocs, where he qualified for NCAAs last season as the SoCon runner-up.
Last year's Wrestle Offs was an exciting, evenly-matched affair that ended in a 21-21 tie. Team Black took the win by criteria thanks to Isaac Ruble's pin over Jaden Reynolds.
Though this year's event will not be televised, live updates will be provided by @PurdueWrestling on X/Twitter.
(Photo courtesy of Noah Molenda)