Medina County Sports Hall of Fame: Tradition, family drove Noah Baughman to success on and off the mat

Former Wadsworth standout Noah Baughman achieved plenty that most wrestlers only dream about. The 2016 graduate was a two-time state champion and won 165 matches, which ranked fourth in Medina County when he graduated and still sits 12th. He is one of seven multi-time Gazette MVPs in the sport and a member of The Gazette All-Decade team. He was also a Super 32 finalist and a Cadet All-American, and that's just his high school career. At Cornell, Baughman was three-time All-Ivy League and an NCAA Division I national qualifier. Those accomplishments are why Baughman will be inducted into the Medina County Sports Hall of Fame during June 25 ceremonies at the Galaxy Conference Center in Wadsworth. A decade after graduating from high school, Baughman is proud of all he accomplished on the mats, but that's not what matters most to him. "There's a lot of Wadsworth wrestling greats that came before me that I always looked up to that have held this honor," Baughman said. "It means so much to me, because it shows how much everybody at Wadsworth wrestling that came before me meant to me and helped me in my development. I'd been through the program since I was a youth with my dad (Todd) coaching me and all the way through coach Mike Wenger, Coach G (John Gramuglia) and so many others. "I'm proud of the achievement, but mostly thankful for all the people that were along for the ride and helped me." Those Wadsworth greats established what it meant to be a Grizzly and made Baughman the perfect candidate to carry the mantle forward after the graduation of fellow Medina County Sports Hall of Famer Nick Tavanello and others. Especially when you add in Baughman's mat acumen and athleticism. "It made my job pretty easy to have him as our leader and captain," Gramuglia said. "I used to ask, 'Who's setting the pace today?' When he was there, it was easy to know who was going to set the pace. He set the standard for the practices, how we're going to act from weigh-ins through when we win. Everything we embodied was through Noah." Baughman was a high-octane wrestler who was always ready to push the pace and pressure opponents into breaking. That style paid off in him winning his first state title at 106 pounds as a sophomore in 2014 and capping his career with a championship at 120 as a senior in 2016. He finished third as a junior. "He was so good on his feet," Gramuglia said. "He would have loved the three-point (takedown) rule now. That would have been quite the advantage. As he got older, he got better on top, but his takedowns were always electric." Older brother Chris Baughman echoed those sentiments. "He always had such a good gas tank," Chris said. "He always worked so hard, but he also was very slick as well from an over-tie. He could scramble for days. He had a fun, exciting style that was high-paced. He loved to get in wrestling positions and scrambles and he came out on top a lot of the time." Baughman still uses the discipline and work ethic he learned from wrestling while living in New York City and working in finance. "The years of wrestling taught me about all the important things in life," he said. "The people you're surrounded with, the things you're doing every single day that feel normal but are what brings life to your day, it taught me to be extremely present and enjoy the things going on in my life each and every day. I'm extremely thankful for the foundation I built with Wadsworth wrestling to make me the person I am today." FAMILY TIES The middle of Todd and Alison Baughman's three boys, Baughman's path to glory was blazed long before he put on a Wadsworth singlet in high school. Competitive by nature, Baughman, Chris, 31, and younger brother Luke, 25, were always finding games and ways to compete. "The best way to describe him was he was ultra-competitive," Chris said. "Being the middle brother, we were always playing sports and competing in any little thing we could. We made everything a competition." Those days of brotherly competition trained Baughman to be a champion, even if they occasionally got on the nerves of Alison. "We'd play inside and get in trouble with our mom." Chris said. "She'd tell us to go outside. It's nice outside. We were always making up games and doing whatever it took to see who could come out on top." Baughman watched his older brother as a member of the 2010 Wadsworth team that became the first public school to win a state title in 33 years. The accomplishments of that group fueled a fire in him. "I was in sixth grade when we won the state championship," he said. "I remember that day like it was yesterday. My older brother was on that team, and I looked up to so many guys on that team. We were a really tight-knit community that was a ton of fun to grow up in." He also remembers watching Chris reach the podium for the first time when he took seventh as a senior in 2012. The next year, Noah Baughman won his first state title. "Nothing is cooler than watching your older brother, who is your role model and hero, get to do all the things you hope to do one day," Baughman said. "I will never forget watching him place at the state tournament his senior year. My family was all in tears of joy in the stands. It's surreal watching him every day." Also surreal was getting to compete with younger brother Luke, a freshman when Baughman was a senior, for one year of high school. Baughman credits Luke with getting him ready to win his second state title and paid his training partner that season a compliment similar to the one Chris gave him, calling his younger brother even more competitive than him. "Getting to share time on a team and on the mat together was the coolest thing of all time," he said. "I couldn't imagine training extremely hard with anyone else. While we are brothers, we are extremely similar in a lot of ways and one of them is definitely our competitiveness. "Getting to duke it out on the mat every single day and then getting to watch him compete at the state tournament after I was out of school, those are just such fun moments that bond people." Luke followed in Noah Baughman's footsteps to become a three-time state placer. He took fourth as a sophomore, second as a junior and fifth as a senior. The training ground of growing up to become a champion made Baughman just the type of example Gramuglia needed for his program at the time. "His character was very high," Gramuglia said. "In school he was involved in a lot of other things besides athletics. He made such an impact. Our program benefited from him, his brothers and his dad was a major part of the youth program. "You don't get a better family than that." MISSION: POSSIBLE Baughman had dreamed of competing at the state tournament since he was in elementary school wrestling under the tutelage of his dad. That dream hit a road block his freshman year at the Cleveland State District. Baughman entered the tournament with a 34-10 record, but the district was loaded with heavy hitters. The state qualifiers out of Cleveland state were Brecksville's Austin Assad (2nd), Brunswick's Josh Heil (3rd), Perrysburg's Mario Guillen (5th) and Nordonia's Tony DeCesare (6th), as all finished in the top six at 106 that year. The quartet went 16-5 at state, and of the five losses Heil beat Guillen in the consolation semifinals and Guillen beat DeCesare for fifth place. That experience fueled Baughman for the next season. "I'd been going to the state tournament since I was in elementary school and watching guys like Brad Squire, Nick Tavanello, Louden Gordon and all these greats wrestling ahead of me on this stage," he said. "I thought it was the biggest thing to ever exist in all of humanity at the time." There was a change in Baughman his second season. No longer an undersized freshman, he tore into the state tournament as the Cleveland State District champion with a 43-3 record. "He jelled and got stronger," Gramuglia said. "He used to get so nervous before his matches. Once he learned how to use his confidence to calm himself down, he got that much better. By his sophomore year he matured into not getting so worked up." Much like Baughman, the Grizzlies were growing up in real time. He was the leader of a core that would push Wadsworth forward over the next few years. Baughman plowed his way into the state final with a technical fall and two major decisions. In the final, he beat Massillon Perry senior Tommy Genetin by 6-3 decision to win his first state title. Suddenly, the thing he was working his whole life for was no longer out of reach and almost seemed routine. "I had worked really hard to get there and when I got there it was pretty similar to everything I had done leading up to it," Baughman said. "I was extremely well prepared and that was a testament to the program. It feels like 'Mission: Impossible' until you get there and then it feels like the same thing we've been doing every day leading up to it." The second state title came with a fresh set of obstacles to overcome, and Baughman found that out at the state tournament his junior year when he moved up to 113 . He once again won the Cleveland State District and built a 39-3 record. He cruised into the semifinals with a pair of technical falls and was leading Grove City Central Crossing's Jaden Maddox when Mattox rallied to earn a victory by 9-5 decision before finishing runner-up that season. Baughman finished the tournament by winning out to take third. "It's probably just as hard — if not harder — as the first one," he said. "It's really hard because everyone is always getting better. It's easy to sit back after accomplishing something like that. You have to ask, 'How do I evolve?' or 'What do I do next?' When you're always winning and finding success, it's really difficult to do that." Younger brother Luke helped Baughman find that next gear with some of the most intense sparring of his career in the practice room. Baughman's love of wrestling was also a driving force. Three days after the state tournament, he was back at Battle Zone in Wadsworth crafting his skills and making the changes that would make him a champion again. Refocused, Baughman won at least 40 matches for a third straight season and only lost once. At state, he won his first two matches by decision before roaring to the finish with two major decisions, the last 16-5 over Fremont Ross' Lamonte Chapman. "That lit the fire for my senior season," Baughman said of training with his brother. "I was excited to mentor him. I was excited to be on a team with him and watch him develop as a wrestler. There's nothing more exciting as a competitor than having someone come in and really want to get to it. He probably made me 10 times better than I ever imagined my senior season because of the amount of times we were giving 150% and wrestling at higher levels than I ever had in my entire life." While finishing his career with a second state title was a storybook ending, it meant just as much to Baughman to give back and show appreciation to all those that helped him. "It was great to end on top," he said. "It'd been such a long ride with Wadsworth wrestling, and that was so great to me. I think back to starting wrestling with my dad as my head coach who had taught me the foundation of everything. Getting back to the top of the podium was great." STILL SEEING RED After high school, Baughman traveled east but kept a very similar look, trading Grizzly red for the Cornell Big Red. He had another successful career with a uniquely unfortunate ending. "My time at Cornell was amazing," Baughman said. "I learned so much being at school those first couple of years. It's a very large jump going from high school wrestling at the highest level to college wrestling. It's the best of the best at high school and then gets filtered down even more." He was named All-Ivy League three times and finished with a 76-36 record, but the matches he didn't get to compete in finished his story. Baughman was close to qualifying for the NCAA D-I National Championships as a freshman and sophomore, finishing third and second at the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association Championships before his junior season was plagued by injuries. His senior season, Baughman and the Cornell wrestling team went to a restaurant to watch the brackets be revealed. He was filled with excitement that day in March 2020 when he was tabbed as the 22nd seed at 141. As he was preparing to head to Minneapolis to compete in a tournament he had dreamed about, Baughman got the news that the COVID-19 pandemic had force the event's cancellation. "It was extremely emotional at the beginning," he said. "I had been so close to qualifying for the national tournament my freshman and sophomore years. Both tournaments I felt like I was deserving of wrestling at, but I didn't get a qualifying bid for them." Over time, Baughman came to terms with the unexpected twist that ended his career. "I felt like I had an awesome chance to compete with the field," he said. "I thought I was super prepared and ready to wrestle. When stuff changes, it's extremely tough to adjust to. Looking back now, I have so much peace about my career and all the things I did from starting at Wadsworth as a 6-year- old to finishing at Cornell." A DIFFERENT CHALLENGE Baughman's days are still filled with work that is fast-paced and pushes him to be competitively at his best, but they are a lot less physically demanding. Living in Brooklyn, he is vice president of finance and accounting for technology startup Order.co. He also spent time as an investment banker on Wall Street. The foundation he built in wrestling prepared him for this chapter of his life. "It was an extremely interesting adjustment period," Baughman said. "They are two very different types of hard work, but both very difficult in their own right. The lessons of taking each day for what it is and going step by step is a way I've always tried to live my life. That mindset of doing what I can today translated from long practices and competitions." Baughman still makes his way back to Wadsworth from time to time to visit his family and always gives back to the program that gave him so much growing up. "When he comes back he does a clinic, a camp or private workouts," Gramuglia said. "He finds ways to help the program. He comes to practice and always gives back. He's always there to better other people." That way of life started in the room at Wadsworth. "My wrestling career was everything I could have imagined and more," Baughman said. "It was never about my finish at the national tournament or any of my accomplishments in high school. It was getting to wrestle with my brothers, growing up with my dad as my coach and working with Coach G, Coach Mike Wenger, Coach Clay Wenger and all the great people I was surrounded with." Contact John Urchek at jurchek@medina-gazette.com.