Elyria senior Kodie Egnor is the middle child and owes a lot to his two brothers when it comes to his wrestling career.

“My little brother (Brandon) brought home a paper about the Elyria biddy wrestling program one day,” Kodie said. “I didn’t want to do it at first and my mom forced me to.

“So we started and just kept going with it. I really liked doing it and it was all because my brother brought home that paper.”

Kodie was in sixth grade. Since then, he’s used older brother Phillip’s career as a measuring stick — particularly Phillip’s senior season. Phillip placed sixth in the tough Brecksville Holiday Tournament, and Kodie finished fifth there this year. Phillip earned his first trip to the Division I state tournament as a senior, and Kodie duplicated the feat last week at 130 pounds. Phillip placed sixth in Columbus, and Kodie hopes to finish a step or two higher.

“We’re pretty tight,” Kodie said.

Motivation through sibling rivalry isn’t the only way Phillip has helped Kodie (34-10) this season. Phillip’s insight was pivotal to Kodie in his go-to-state match against Avon Lake senior Kevin Brunner, who had beaten Kodie in their three previous meetings.

“(Phillip) watched one of my matches against Brunner on video and told me what I should do … and it worked,” Kodie said. “Brunner switched me twice in the match, and (Phillip) told me that the next time he switched to just let him go and just give up one (point) instead of two.”

His brothers aren’t the only ones who’ve had an impact on Kodie’s career. Pioneers coach Erik Burnett said he met with Egnor a few times during his eighth-grade season at Eastern Heights, but didn’t start working on wrestling skills until the summer before his freshman year.

“When he came into high school, we were trying to fast-track him,” Burnett said. “We had that real good group of kids that we were training — the Stiebers (Logan and Hunter from Monroeville), (St. Edward’s Jamie) Clark and the Squires (Brad and Kagan) from Wadsworth — we’d get together on Sundays.

“I asked Kodie, ‘Hey, would you like to go out there and wrestle those guys.’ He went every Sunday. I’d pick him up in the morning and we drove out there and worked out with those guys. A lot of those workouts weren’t real pretty.

“But by the end of his freshman year, he ends up getting to the district tournament, which if you’d have told me that at the beginning of the year, I’d have told you, ‘You’re nuts.’”

Egnor said the early battles against that elite group definitely gave him a career boost.

“They just killed me — I had no chance against them,” he said. “They just kept bringing me out and I kept getting better and better because they kept whipping on me. It made me stronger and improved my technique.”

Egnor improved rapidly throughout the season and earned a spot in the Lorain County All-Star match, where he defeated fellow freshman 103-pounder Uland Ralston — a current standout at Southview.

“Now I remember … I did beat him,” Egnor said. “He cradled me early in the match and it was 5-0, then I came back and kept tilting him to win the match.”

Egnor began traveling all over the country to better himself during the summers. He went to the nationals in Fargo, N.D., the Disney Duals in Orlando, Fla., and anywhere else that the nation’s top wrestlers would congregate.

During the high school season, Burnett took Egnor and his teammates to the Walsh Jesuit Ironman — considered the toughest high school tournament in the nation — and to Brecksville, and the Pioneers competed in the newly formed and super-tough Northeast Ohio Conference. It was at the league tournament during his junior season that Kodie finally captured his first tournament championship.

It was one of the highest points of his career, and two weeks later he hit one of the lowest when he failed to make weight for the sectional tournament.

“He wasn’t doing a lot of things right as far as his weight management,” Burnett said. “That finally caught up to him at the end of last season. We met and agreed that it was something that happened and he needed to put it behind him and we needed to move forward.

“He learned a valuable lesson by that, because this year not only has he managed his weight right, he decided to drop down to 130. It made me nervous after last year, but he had done everything right this year, so I knew if he continued to do that, he’d be fine.”

The move paid off as Egnor rolled through the rough Southview sectional and the brutal Ashland district to earn his spot in Columbus this weekend.

“It feels good because of the way last year ended,” Egnor said. “I just had to work hard this year, the coaches have been pushing me and I’ve had a lot of good people in the room that have helped me train to get this far.”
“I just want to go out on top during my senior year.”

Contact Shaun Bennett at 329-7137 or sbennett@chroniclet.com.

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