NCAA announces first wrestling award standings for the 2017 season

INDIANAPOLIS – The NCAA has released the first set of standings for the 2017 NCAA Wrestling Awards that will be awarded in March at the respective Division I, II and III Wrestling Championships.

The inaugural NCAA Wrestling Awards were presented at the 2012 wrestling championships. The three awards, given in each division, honor the Most Dominant Wrestler as well as the student-athletes that have accumulated the most falls and the most technical falls throughout the course of the regular and postseasons.

For falls and tech falls to be counted they must come against opponents in the same division. Ties in the two categories are broken based on the aggregate time.

The initial standings for falls in Division I features a tie between a pair of former NCAA champions in Cornell 184-pounder Gabe Dean and Penn State 149-pounder Zain Retherford with 10 each. Dean holds the tiebreaker with an aggregate time of 21:48, almost nine minutes ahead of Retherford.

In Division II, Gannon 133-pounder Carmine Ciotti has 11 falls, while Western State 125-pounder Ronald Wardleigh is also in double figures with 10.

Another wrestler at 133 pounds leads Division III with Messiah’s Hunter Harris already at 16 falls this season. Jake Evans of Waynesburg and A.J. Kowal of Stevens Institute of Technology are keeping pace with 15 and 14, respectively.

True freshman Jack Mueller of Virginia leads Division I in tech falls with nine this season at 125 pounds, while 2016 national runner-up TJ Dudley of Nebraska is second with eight at 184 pounds.

Adams State 133-pounder Martin Ramirez has six tech falls in Division II to lead a quintet of wrestlers that have accumulated five.

Stephen Jarrell of Johnson & Wales (Rhode Island) has nine tech falls at 174 pounds to hold the lead over Lucas Malmberg of Messiah and Jason Lynch of Chicago with eight this season.

The Most Dominant Wrestler standings are calculated by adding the total number of points awarded through match results and dividing that number by the total number of matches wrestled. Points per match are awarded as follows. A 12-match minimum is required to be eligible for the Most Dominant Award.

* Fall, forfeit, injury default or DQ = 6 points (-6 points for a loss)

* Tech falls = 5 points (-5 points for a loss)

* Major decision = 4 points (-4 points for a loss)

* Decision = 3 points (-3 points for a loss)

The initial Most Dominant Wrestler standings will be released later this season to allow wrestlers to achieve the 12-match minimum that is required to be eligible for the standings.