By the time the Presidents’ Athletic Conference wrestling championship reached the finals, the outcome was all but decided. Saint Vincent, in the first year of its second incarnation, had seven wrestlers competing for titles, making the result almost anticlimactic.

But once their title was made official via public address announcement, the Bearcats’ celebration was anything but muted.

“We were just waiting for them to announce it on the loudspeaker,” said freshman Logan Bechtold, a Kiski Area grad who finished second at 174 pounds. “We just all went nuts.”

The Bearcats’ return to the world of intercollegiate wrestling couldn’t have been scripted much better. Sean Cain (125), Charlie Mesich (157) and Chase Brandebura (165) won individual titles. Bechtold, Kyle McCollum (133), Tyler Debnar (141) and Jake Beistel (285) earned runner-up finishes.

That put Saint Vincent 22.5 points ahead of runner-up Washington & Jefferson.

“I think we were a little nervous going in because we didn’t know what to expect,” coach Dom Nania said. “Once we got rolling, it was kind of a roller-coaster all day.”

Added Bechtold: “It was just get after it, go have fun and be you out there. … (Nania) kept saying it’s on us. Get out there and get after it. We were still focused on wrestling but we were goofing off with each other, cracking jokes the whole time. And it was a great time.”

Bechtold might have appreciated the title as much as anyone. If not a little more.

His season began with an injury, featured a change in weight class and ended with a silver medal earned in a hard-fought match against the No. 8 wrestler in Intermat’s D-III rankings.

In the last week of preseason workouts, Bechtold suffered an ACL tear. No surgery was required, but he still missed several weeks of training and competition.

He didn’t wrestle his first match until Dec. 8, recording a pin against Pitt-Bradford. The Bearcats next traveled to Las Vegas for the Wartburg Duals, and Bechtold lost four of his five matches there, finally winning via 5-2 decision in his fifth and final match.

In the Bearcats’ first match after the holiday break, Bechtold lost a 12-1 major decision to Waynesburg’s Colby Morris, the aforementioned top-10 174-pounder in the country. At that point, he was 2-5 as a collegiate wrestler.

There was rust being knocked off, to be certain. But Bechtold also was competing in a weight class he hadn’t planned on filling.

Nania said he recruited Bechtold with the idea of using him at 157 or 165, but with a need at the 174 spot, he approached Bechtold about bumping up in weight class. Bechtold accepted the challenge without hesitation.

“Logan is probably one of the toughest kids I have ever coached, mentally and physically,” said Nania, adding that Bechtold’s competition weight usually hovered close to 170. “He doesn’t let a lot bother him. Our upper middle weights really struggled that first semester, and having that conversation with Logan, he was like, ‘Yeah, man. I’ll do it.’

“We gave him the option to go back down, but he said he was bought in to where he was.”

As Bechtold got more accustomed to the new weight class, results started to come. After the Jan. 11 loss to Morris, Bechtold (7-5) lost only one other time, also to Morris at PACs.

Though that second meeting with Morris also ended in a loss, Bechtold could see the strides. He had made a five-point improvement from their previous meeting and made Morris work a little harder to earn the title.

“He’s a really good overall wrestler. Solid,” Bechtold said about Morris. “I lost … but I felt like I pushed the pace a lot. It showed me where I was. I got ‘majored’ by him (after Christmas break), and it was 8-2 now.”

Bechtold said his biggest improvement this season was being more aggressive offensively. That, he said, is something Nania preaches with all of his wrestlers: get to your offense and try to score as many points as possible.

Nania, meanwhile, said Bechtold has the perfect constitution to wrestle that way.

“He’s very physically strong. He spends a lot of time in the weight room in the summertime,” Nania said. “So he is able to wrestle with, I believe, anybody when it comes to strength.

“But he’s just …”

Nania paused for a moment.

“… a maniac. He’ll come at you for seven minutes.”

Nania further indicated that, as Bechtold continues to progress, he will become an opponent no one wants to face. At any level.

Bechtold said his wrestling acumen is night and day compared to a year ago, even with the injury setback.

“If I would wrestle myself from last year,” he said, “I’d probably tech (fall) myself.”

Bechtold said after the Bearcats won the PAC title, which was held at W&J, the team stopped at Sheetz to get food, hang out and talk about what had just unfolded. Then, he said, they got back to campus, went to bed and got right back to work the next day.

The postseason continues for the Bearcats as they look to add some individual accolades to their PAC team championship.

The future looks promising for Saint Vincent. Of the seven wrestlers who earned titles or took second at PACs, only Beistel will graduate. Five of the other six are freshmen, and the other, McCollum, is just a sophomore.

“It should be, on paper, only up from here,” Nania said. “There’s so many unknowns that could happen. But I tell them all the time, ‘This is the worst you’re ever going to be in this program.’ We just have a group that loves competing.”

Added Bechtold: “The next step is get more people (on the roster) to keep pushing us and for us to continue to wrestle and get better. We have goals to place at NCAAs as a team. We just have to keep working hard and pushing ourselves to get where we want to be.”

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