KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) has officially announced the qualifiers for the 2023 NAIA Wrestling National Championships hosted at Hartman Arena in Park City, Kan. Eastern Oregon University had a program record nine wrestlers make the cut with eight automatic qualifiers and one national at-large bid.
Each conference tournament was awarded automatic bids per weight class based on the final regular-season poll.. Each conference was awarded automatic berths based on the amount of wrestlers ranked in each weight class. Each conference was awarded a minimum of one automatic bid per weight class, which will go to the tournament individual champions, even if the conference did not have any wrestlers ranked in the final regular-season poll. The CCC received the most automatic bids with a total of 50.
After the conference tournaments concluded, an 18-member committee consisting of conference raters and oversight members met to select the remaining national at-large qualifiers. In total, 36 student-athletes were selected by at-large classification. The seeding and preliminary brackets will be announced on NAIA.org by 5 p.m. (CST) on Friday, February 24.
The Cascade Collegiate Conference led all conferences with 57 individual qualifiers when including automatic qualifiers and at-large bids. Eastern Oregon is traveling the second largest team to nationals with nine just behind CCC Champion Menlo College with 10.
Listed below are the Mountie grapplers who earned their spot at the NAIA Men's Wrestling Championship.
WEIGHT NAME QUALIFICATION METHOD
125 Hunter Sparks Automatic Qualifier
125 Luciano Fasulo Automatic Qualifier
133 Braden Carson Automatic Qualifier
141 Jaxon Morlan National At-Large
174 Keegan Mulhill Automatic Qualifier
184 Kyle Knudtson Automatic Qualifier
197 Marco Retano Automatic Qualifier
197 Jay Smith Automatic Qualifier
285 Noel Orozco Automatic Qualifier
