St. Mary’s Ryken’s 144lber Evan Boblits comes in as one of our Middle Weight Wrestlers of the Year. His season long rivalry with Gilman’s Tyson Sherlock landed both in the Honorable Mention section of the Scorebook Live National Rankings.
Boblits beat Sherlock in the season opening Ray Oliver Tournament at McDonogh, which allowed him to also take over the No. 1 spot in Legacy Wrestling’s Maryland Rankings. Also, at Ray Oliver Boblits hung a loss on St. Christopher’s Walker Turley from Virginia, 4-1 in overtime. The Ray Oliver championship was his second in a row.
Turley dropped to 138lbs later in the year and now resides as an honorable mention in the national rankings at 138lbs after defeating Mt. St. Joseph’s Carter Nogle, 5-0, in the third-place match at the National Prep Tournament. Nogle is No. 1 in Maryland at 138lbs in Legacy’s rankings.
The stay atop the state rankings faded at the Beast of the East as Boblits failed to place and Sherlock landed in the sixth spot of the podium. At the Beast, one of Boblits losses was to Shane McFillin (Bethlehem Catholic, PA), 2-0, the other was to Maddox Shaw (Thomas Jefferson, PA), who would drop to 138 later and is the No. 3 guy in the country at 138.
On Sherlock’s way to the Beast podium, he defeated McFillin, which given their ultimate tie-breaker result, gave Sherlock ammunition to jump Boblits in the state rankings. At the tough Trojan Wars Tournament hosted by Chambersburg High School in Pennsylvania, Boblits brought home a bronze after defeating a different St. Christopher’s foe, Tyler Hood, in the ultimate tiebreaker frame. Boblits fell to Hood in the championship bracket.
A War on the Shore title came with relative ease for Boblits as he beat Xavier, Connecticut’s Kyle Levesque, 7-0, in the finals and decked Mt. St. Joe’s Jaden Diggs in 32 seconds. Diggs was ranked in Maryland before his season ended.
A dual meet with nationally ranked Faith Christian Academy of Pennsylvania gave Boblits a shot at a fellow honorable mention grappler, Chase Hontz. Hontz was able to secure a 2-0 victory. A dual with Spalding saw the junior down Zane Leitzel, a national prep placer ranked second in Maryland at 138, 7-0, at 144lbs.
A third straight WCAC crown came with a one-minute pin of Bishop McNamara’s Braylin Muldrew.
Next up was the Maryland Independent Schools State Tournament and a chance to face Sherlock again. Both did their part in making the rematch happen, and just like the first encounter, when Sherlock was one, and Boblits two, the grapplers went into the ultimate tiebreaker and saw the same outcome, a Boblits win, which allowed him to ascend to the top spot in the state.
The state title was the Knights first after being second at states as a freshman, then missing last year’s edition due to illness.
Since they were seeded fourth (Boblits) and fifth at National Preps, a third meeting was on the horizon in those quarters. This time, though, the outcome would change, as Sherlock finally beat his rival, 3-1. The rest of the shindig played out in a manner that landed the two of them in the fifth-place bout. Boblits would come out ahead in this one to secure his top ranking in the state.
Before the season began, Boblits challenged himself by major tournaments that are known for their difficulty including the Journeymen Fall Classic. The Ryken grappler placed eleventh at the Journeymen, picking up quality wins over Xavier’s Anthony Basile and New York’s Amir Avazov. Basile was a runner-up at War on the Shore to Nogle this year. Avazov is a multi-time New York state placer.
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