Collar Tie Press

For Annesley Day, the ambitions are as boundless as her drive to bring them within reach.

Ask the Tiffin University junior about her goals and the list comes without a pause: an NCAA title, a Women’s Nationals title, a world title and an Olympic title.

“I’m coming for it all,” she said.

Meanwhile, Sophia Antonio is embracing a different kind of challenge, one that has taken her from an unassuming freshman to a team captain in just a year.

The sophomore from North Royalton described herself as quiet when she arrived on campus last season. Now, she’s one of the leaders setting the tone for the program.

Ask either one who pushes her hardest in the practice room and the answer is the same: the other one.

Day and Antonio are two of Tiffin’s three captains, along with senior Abi Miller, on a rather young team overall.

The team started the year with more than a dozen new faces in the wrestling room, and had to replace outgoing graduates Erin Martin, Jenavi Alejandro and Leah Pekar.

A team built on family

The first word head coach Chandler Minnard used to describe the identity of the team is “family.”

Minnard also calls this group young and energetic, but said the family feel is by design.

“I’ve been recruiting for that,” he said.

The first thing he looks for in a recruit, he said, is character: “Are they a good person?”

Good attitude and good grades come next.

It shows.

While the team depth may be thinner at the very top end of the weight classes, Minnard said fostering the right culture matters more than maintaining the biggest roster possible.

Why Tiffin

Day found Tiffin through the transfer portal. After her freshman year at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, she heard from a lot of coaches. Tiffin stood out to her for having just had five national qualifiers the year before and for its coaching staff.

Then came a phone call with Coach Minnard, who talked with her about wrestling and her goals and “seemed super supportive.”

“I just felt like I could reach my goals here with the partners and the coaches and everything,” Day said.

Day also traded Austin traffic for small-town Ohio and doesn’t miss it. “I definitely like the amount of traffic that I don’t have anymore,” she said. “I don’t want to take like thirty minutes to drive places.”

The weather is another matter. “Also it’s freezing out here,” she said. Still, she added: “I love Ohio.”

Antonio’s decision was closer to home. She didn’t visit many schools, and her brother had already gone to Tiffin, so the campus was familiar.

She also liked the coaches and expected to get along with them, describing that as “an important part of choosing where you’re gonna go.”

She likes the distance, too.

“I’m far enough from home, but it’s still close enough to be able to go home when I need to,” she said.

The push

Antonio is Day’s main drill partner.

“We drill like all the time together,” Day said. They traveled to Spokane together last year and set up extra sessions on their own. “She pushes me, I push her. Yeah, it’s great.”

Antonio returns the compliment.

“Her work ethic is crazy,” she said. “She’s always striving to get better.”

Day complains about soreness like anyone else, Antonio added, but once she’s on the mat, “you would never guess.”

The volume is high. Day said she works out “three or four times a day” and is on the mat “a lot more than I should.”

Antonio, too, puts her own total at six to seven days a week, and even a light Monday of stretching still meant being on the mat.

“I love the sport,” Day said, “so I just enjoy doing it.”

For Antonio, the captaincy has meant finding a bigger voice.

“Last year I was a freshman. I was a very quiet freshman, and now I have to step up and be loud and keep everyone else in check,” she said. “So it’s definitely a big role change.”

Filling the voids

Losing the four-year veteran leadership of Martin, Alejandro and Pekar leaves a gap.

“It’s not easy to fill that void,” Minnard said.

The coaching staff has changed, too.

“It’s tough,” Minnard said of no longer having assistant coach Sugey Ceja in Tiffin’s corner.

Ceja accepted the head coaching job at Mount Union, and what she had brought to the Tiffin family was “very special,” he said.

But coaching staff departures come with the territory. Minnard said he told Ceja at the time he hired her that the goal was to help her earn a head coaching position.

Every coach is different, he said, and that’s a good thing. So while the next assistant won’t fill exactly the role Ceja carved out, that also doesn’t mean he isn’t still looking for the next great one.

The goals

“We want to place Top 3 in the region, which won’t be easy,” Minnard said.

He feels Region 4 is the toughest and deepest in the NCAA.

North Central College, Grand Valley State University and Northern Michigan University, just to name a few, are among the strong names, as well as a handful of others, that make Region 4 so competitive.

Minnard commended Northern Michigan for bringing in what he described as one of the best recruiting classes in the country this past offseason.

But Tiffin’s focus isn’t strictly on beating those teams in the dual format. Instead, they’re aiming for individual successes: helping each wrestler reach her full potential.

“I’m not too concerned about our duals record this year,” Minnard said.

For the captains, the goals are personal.

Day’s long-range list is Olympic-sized. Her daily focus is simpler: showing up to work every day and sharpening the small technique.

Antonio’s targets are close at hand. She earned national alternate status last season, finishing fourth at the NCAA regional championships, one spot short of qualifying.

“I would love to qualify for nationals,” she said, “and then the big goal would be to All-American at nationals.” She wants to earn All-American status at the World Team Trials, too.

Early returns

Tiffin got an early test Sunday, Nov. 1, at its own Tiffin Open, an event Minnard called “crazy good” and “super successful.”

“It grew tremendously,” he said, with entries up by more than 100 from the year before, to 360 wrestlers from at least 30 schools.

The tournament also lets high school wrestlers enter. Several top Ohio high schoolers made deep runs against the college competition, including Ella Thomas, a senior at Poland Seminary, who took first at 103 pounds.

Thomas’s opponent in the final was a fellow high schooler, Lottie Durant, a Virginia native and sophomore at Bishop McCort in Pennsylvania.

For Tiffin, every wrestler who competed Sunday notched wins on their resumes.

In addition to Day, Antonio and Miller, that list included junior Kinsey Konrad, a transfer from Cerritos College in California, Megan Preston, a redshirt freshman from Florida, and two Ohio freshmen Marisa McCartin and Layken Lively.

Minnard said he pulled three wrestlers early, even as they were performing well, to keep them healthy.

Getting healthy is also why a few notable names on the Dragons’ have yet to make their Tiffin debut on the mat but could do so soon.

The Dragons’ top placer at the open was Day, who made it to the finals, where she ran into defending 2026 NCAA national champion Yu Sakamoto, a senior at McKendree University.

McKendree also won the team title at the inaugural NCAA Women’s Wrestling Championships last season, topping D1 power-five recruiting powerhouse Iowa, who took second, and the Region 4 champion North Central, who finished third.

On Sunday, McKendree had a total of 11 semifinalists and six in first place at the Tiffin Open.

Sakamoto won her final bout 10-0 over Day that night, but it was a hard fought match and turned out to be the longest of Sakamoto’s six victories en route to first. Sakamoto finished the tech fall with just two seconds to go in the last period.

“Annesley’s responding well after these competitive matches,” Minnard said. He credited her improvement in handling both wins and losses.

For a wrestler whose goals start with an NCAA title, a final against the defending champion is exactly the kind of match she has been working toward and will want another shot at.

Advice for incoming wrestlers

Asked what they would tell a high schooler thinking about college wrestling, both captains pointed to the same thing: the jump in competition.

• Day: “High school results don’t matter.” Falling short at state in high school doesn’t mean you can’t come to college and be top ten in your own country.
• Antonio: The jump keeps growing. She didn’t find the first step from high school to college “crazy,” she said, but this year was different: “Whoa.” Her advice: “You just gotta always go out there and wrestle your hardest.”
• What Day wishes she’d known sooner: “Having more confidence in my work ethic.” She had the work ethic in high school, she said, but it was her confidence in that she learned to grow.
• What Antonio wishes she’d known sooner: “Hard work beats talent,” she said. “If you’re in there working every day, you can beat them.”

Circled on the calendar

The next big meet Minnard has circled on the calendar is the Adrian Invite on Sunday, Nov. 15, at Adrian College in Adrian, Michigan. Adrian will be hosting duals that Saturday before as well.

For Day and Antonio, with the season now in full swing, the work isn’t slowing down anytime soon and each has the other to make sure of it.