Marcelli's Law

Marcelli's Law taking effect for Jackson wrestling program

The way Lucas Marcelli looks at it, his trip to the state wrestling tournament last year just might have been the spark to set off a wildfire for the Jackson wrestling program.

Just call it Marcelli’s Law.

The way Lucas Marcelli looks at it, his trip to the state wrestling tournament last year just might have been the spark to set off a wildfire for the Jackson wrestling program.

“It’s just kind of a chain reaction,” Marcelli said. “Once you get one guy doing it, you’ve got to get more guys doing it. Pretty soon, you’ll get five or six guys getting down there every year and getting down on the podium, too. We just need to continue this pattern.”

Marcelli’s theory certainly looks like it’s ready to gain some serious traction. A year after he became the first Polar Bear wrestler to reach Columbus since 2007, the senior 145-pounder is making a return trip to this weekend’s Ohio State Individual Wrestling Championships. Not only is Marcelli — who placed sixth last year at 145 — returning, he’s bringing a couple of teammates with him in sophomore 113-pounder Justyn Bostic and senior 182-pounder Charlie Dear.

No longer is 2007 a reference point for the Jackson wrestling program, at least with regard to qualifying for Columbus. That was the last time the Polar Bears had multiple state qualifiers, until this season.

And the credit for starting Jackson toward this moment is being credited to Marcelli for blazing the program’s trail back down to the state tournament.

“It puts a lot of belief in our coaches and my teammates,” said Bostic, who turned his first district tournament appearance into his first state berth this season. “Going into this offseason, I knew if I put in the time, just like Lucas had done and so many of the kids do, and I believed in myself, I could go to the next level. That’s what we’ve really focused on.”

Perhaps nobody can relate to the hardships it takes to get down to the state tournament among the three Polar Bears better than Dear. Like Marcelli, Dear is a senior.

Unlike Marcelli, though, Dear’s previous two trips to district had fallen just shy of Columbus. So to be able to close out his career in Columbus is something that is, while not his ultimate goal, certainly one of his top priorities.

“My goal was to get down to the state tournament and get out of district for my senior year,” Dear said. “It was something I wasn’t able to do the last three years.”

Now what the Polar Bears would like to do is remove 2007 completely from the “last time it happened” department. That was also the last time Jackson had multiple state placers, with Adam Haas taking second and Mike Hillock and Dante Rini each taking sixth.

What Jackson coach Rocky Laughlin also would like to see is Marcelli’s chain-reaction theory prove to be correct going forward. And the biggest way he believes that can happen is to continue to have wrestlers who have wrestled at the state tournament competing in the program.

Thus, the torch gets passed from Marcelli this year to Bostic next year.

“It’s nice that one of those guys is only a sophomore,” Laughlin said. “So, again, just like last year, we’re going to bring that back into the room. I think when you can do that, that’s big.”

You could call it one of the postulates to Marcelli’s Law.

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