Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

SOLON – Gage Marty and Hayden Taylor are close.

The Solon juniors are football teammates, fishing partners, practically neighbors and basically best friends.

Though the two have known each other since elementary school they didn’t become close friends until junior high.

That’s when Marty started to standout on the wrestling mat.

“He really started getting really good and beating a lot of kids in junior high and that’s around the time we started hanging out more,” Taylor said. “We’ve been really good friends since.”

Taylor had always been a wrestling junkie so when Marty started spending more time at club practices the two began to forge a friendship.

A friendship built through wrestling.

“They love to push each other,” Solon wrestling coach TJ Bevans said. “Even though there is a pretty big weight difference between them they are really good for each other.”

When your friendship is built by wrestling what do you do when a global pandemic takes away the opportunity to compete in the sport?

If you are Marty and Taylor the answer is simple – you build a wrestling room.

“During quarantine we couldn’t go to any wrestling clubs or anything so we said we are going to build our own place so we can keep wrestling, keep working out,” Marty said. “We came up with the plans and everything and actually got it built pretty quickly.”

It sounds a little crazy.

A scheme that a couple of teenagers came up with to throw a mat in a garage.

It was much more than that for Taylor and Marty who have a combined three state medals between them already.

“Initially it was just going to be a small part of the building, a mat in one corner,” Taylor explained. “It turned into basically the entire place.”
Marty’s parents David and Amber have a barn on their property previously used for horses.

When Marty’s Older sister Gabrielle headed to college at Baylor to be a member of the equestrian team the family sold the horses.

Last spring when the Covid-19 pandemic closed gyms and fitness centers across the state and country Marty and Taylor saw an opportunity.

“When they sold their horses I told Gage, ‘You know what we should do is we should build a wrestling room in it’,” Taylor said. “Before you knew it we were moving the horse stalls and getting everything ready.”

Taylor and Marty had help in the project but did a majority of the work themselves.

They dug out the area that previously housed the horse stalls and put in concrete and painted the entire building.

It was a month of real work during a time with no school or wrestling that became a labor of love.

“I’m interested in the trades so I enjoyed it,” Marty said. “Hayden was over at my house every day anyway so we had to figure out something to do over quarantine.”

Completed the building now looks like a legitimate wrestling room complete with weight racks and cardio equipment.

It was immediately put to use.

“He lives a mile down the road from me so whenever I need to get some weight off or get some cardio in we can do down there and drill or get a lift in or run on the treadmill,” Taylor said. “It’s super nice.”

The at-home facility helped Taylor and Marty stay sharp over the spring and summer without many opportunities to compete.

It has been used during the season as a place to put in an extra workout.

“They live a little way away from town so its nice for them to be able to get a workout in out there,” Bevans said. “They built it themselves because they had nowhere to wrestle. They saw that and the found a way to fix that themselves.”

Now Taylor and Marty are hoping the extra work they put in leads to more hardware.

A two-time state champion, Taylor enters the Class 2A, District 7 meet on Saturday at Solon top-ranked at 160 pounds, unbeaten on the season at 33-0 and riding a 105-match winning streak.

A seventh-place finisher at the state meet last season at 195 pounds, Marty (31-7) is ranked No. 10 at 220 pounds and faces a challenging bracket on Saturday to earn a return trip to state.

Marty opens with sixth-ranked Christian Nunley (27-2) of West Delaware in a bracket that also includes second-ranked Kobe Simon (31-3) of West Liberty.

One thing is for sure on Saturday, Marty and Taylor will both be ready to wrestle and in one another’s corner.

“He’s a great teammate, he always pushes me in training and it’s always better when you are training with your buddy too,” Taylor said. “That makes it a lot more fun.”

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