Oregon State Wrestling took on the visiting out-of-conference rival Wyoming Cowboys at Gill Coliseum on Jan. 31. The Beavers were able to walk away with four victories, but Wyoming’s victories in other matches secured the meet win for the Cowboys. 

OSU’s four victories came from redshirt freshman Brandon Kaylor at 125 lbs., redshirt sophomore Grant Willits at 141 lbs., redshirt sophomore Lane Stigall at 149 lbs., and redshirt junior Aaron Olmos at 165 lbs. The Beavers are now 5-3 on the season and are still 0-1 in conference duals.

Olmos secured a sudden victory win against Wyoming redshirt freshman Cole Moody. He was the first match of the dual meet and one of the four victories for the Beavers. 

“I wanted to start it off right. I knew I had to set it off right for the team and for the crowd, and I knew I had to come out with this win. That’s all I could think about,” Olmos said when asked about his feelings on being the first match of the night. Olmos now improves to nine wins and 10 losses on the season. 

Willits, who previously received PAC-12 wrestler of the week honors for defeating No. 10 ranked Josh Heil of Campbell, won his match against redshirt freshman Trevor Jeffries of Wyoming by a score of 12-10.

“I’m feeling pretty confident. I’m coming off six straight wins in a row. I beat the No. 10 ranked guy last weekend. I’m feeling really good going into this weekend,” Willits said about future matches. “This weekend is going to be huge for me. I have two ranked wrestlers, and both are in our conference, so I’m looking confident going into those.” Willits now improves to 17 wins and seven losses on the season. 

Stigall had an upset victory of his own as he defeated No. 20 nationally ranked wrestler Jaron Jenson by a score of 9-3. 

“I feel like I wrestled good, you can always wrestle better. I always know going out there that I’m outworking everyone, I just got to go out there and let it show.” Stigall said. 

Stigall, who defeated former PAC-12 champ Josh Maruca of Arizona State two weeks ago, now improves to 14 wins and 11 losses on the season. 

OSU head coach Jim Zalesky gave his own evaluation on how he thought the team performed during the dual. 

“I thought we had a good effort, just a couple of matches where the guys are taking offense to us and we got to turn that around. You get those matches like that, you got to be hitting the offense,” Zalesky said. 

The Beavers will now travel south to take on CS Bakersfield on Feb. 7 and Stanford on Feb. 9. After that, the Beavers will return back to Gill Coliseum to face California Baptist on Feb. 14 and University of Arkansas, Little Rock (UALR) on Feb. 15.