By Rob Sherrill, W.I.N. High School Editor
For four years, Scott O’Donnell has been one of the faces of one of the nation’s fastest-rising high school programs, Kansas City Oak Park High. The school has been just one of the major contributors to the Kansas City area’s rise to prominence on the national scholastic wrestling stage.
This year, O’Donnell (130) and teammate Shane Nay (145) made the Northmen one of just three programs in the nation to crown two four-time state champions this year. They helped swell the state’s total of four-time state champions to 13.
Wrestling since the age of six, O’Donnell was a Cadet National Greco-Roman champion prior to starting his high school career. His older sisters are athletes as well: Julie was a gymnast at Missouri and Meagan an all-conference pole vaulter at Central Missouri.
This year, he finished 37-4 and scored the only two takedowns of his 5-4 state final victory over a fellow returning state champion, Corey Carr of Kansas City Park Hill High. His career record was 163-9, and he signed with the University of Virginia in November, becomign an integral part of a Cavalier fall class that was ranked No. 3 nationally by W.I.N.
Also an outstanding student, O’Donnell carries a 4.0 grade-point average and ranks No. 16 in a class of more than 400 students.
Recently, W.I.N. caught up with O’Donnell for this candid interview.

WIN: You finished your high school career as a four-time state champion. Has that started to sink in yet?
O’Donnell: Yeah, it has a little bit. I’m pretty relieved that it’s over with and I’m really glad that things ended well.
WIN: Most guys who are going for their fourth state title are pretty heavy favorites. You weren’t really that much of a favorite. Some might have considered you the underdog. Did that keep you on your toes a little bit more?
O’Donnell: When I lost to (Carr) in the middle of the season, it was one of those middle-of-the-season losses. It was just a loss and I had to come back from it and really get ready. And I learned from the losses before and in practice I worked on specific things that helped me win in the state finals.
WIN: Take me through the state final, how it went.
O’Donnell: The first period ended 0-0. In the second period, he took down and I immediately cut him. Later on in the period, I took him down and then I cut him again, so at the end of the second period it was 2-2. In the third period I chose down and I got an escape pretty quickly. I took him down with a head-inside single and I cut him again. It was 5-3. I took a stalling point with about 15 seconds left and that’s how it ended, 5-4.
WIN: So your game plan obviously worked pretty well…
O’Donnell: Yeah. Before the match we worked a lot with me on the bottom because the week before (in a 3-2 victory in the district final) he rode me out for an entire period. So going down in the third period and getting out right away, that was a big point for me.
WIN: Since you won (the Cadet Nationals) before you got into high school, it seems like you’ve been a marked man. You’ve had that bulls-eye on you.
O’Donnell: Coming into my high school career, I don’t really know what people thought about me, but my goal was always to be a four-time state champion. I just kind of took it one year at a time and my freshman year, before the state finals, I was kind of the underdog, too. I had to go against an undefeated senior and I beat him.
But I didn’t really pay too much attention to what people thought. I had a goal and I knew what I had to do.
WIN: You talked about the loss in the middle of the season. Oak Park wrestles such a tough schedule now. It’s got to hard to be at that peak for every match.
O’Donnell: Yeah, it’s a long season and we wrestled some really tough competition. So every match you’ve gotta be on and every tournament you’ve gotta be ready. Like I said, you’re always gonna have your off matches during a season and you’ve have to learn from them.
WIN: Oak Park went to the Elite 8 Duals, which is probably the biggest high school event you’ve ever been in and had the trip to Iowa City West. As a team, you probably fell a little short of your goals, but how did you take those experiences and use them the rest of the season?
O’Donnell: The Ohio trip was a really good way to start our season, with a lot of really tough competition. We had a lot of guys come away from there with some really big wins, which gave them a lot of confidence. And I thought I wrestled pretty well in Ohio.
Coming back to Iowa, I was sick at that tournament and I took a couple of losses there. But I learned from those losses as well. I came back and trained hard, which in the long run helped me get ready for the state tournament.
WIN: What about the team? You came back and boat-raced Class 4 and had a really nice end to the season. How was the team able to turn some of those early disappointments into success?
O’Donnell: We were disappointed in the losses as a team. But coming back into the practice room, as a whole, the intensity was so much higher. We knew some other teams were better than us, but we wanted to be the best, too. Everybody is our practice room was going really, really hard. The overall intensity level was definitely higher. It got us all in better shape, we all pushed each other, it was really good for that part. But coming back, having a more intense room, that helped us in the long run at state. We were in such great shape; you could tell when we wrestled our opponents. Disappointment made us train harder and we were better for it.
WIN: How did your heavyweight, Elijah Madison, turn the corner this year?
O’Donnell: My opinion is that he worked a lot harder this year. He wasn’t with us the entire season last year and that may have affected him a little bit. This year, I could just tell he was working a lot harder.
WIN: You have guys like Elijah and Cody (Tyler) and Mac (Bailey), who are part of the new wave on the team. Then there are guys like you, who were there when the Kansas City area was just starting to make a national impact, and you’ve been able to grow along with them over the last four of five years. What’s that ride been like?
O’Donnell: It’s been exciting. There are so many good guys around the Kansas City area, that I can go work out with, now that the season’s over. In the summer, working out with our national teams and all the guys in the area, we’ll just meet up at a high school and work out. And it’s really cool that we’ve been able to put Kansas City on the map nationwide, and it’s bee fun being a part of that. The younger guys are going to continue that. Seeing more recruits coming out of the Kansas City area and being recruited by the (Division 1) colleges, hopefully in the future we’ve got more guys doing that.
WIN: You signed with Virginia in November, so you’ll be going halfway across the country to continue your college career. How did your connection with Virginia get established?
O’Donnell: When I first started looking at colleges, I don’t think I even realized that Virginia even had a wrestling program. I was looking at a lot of Big 12 and Big Ten schools, and coach (Steve) Garland started calling my coach, Randy Smith, after he got the (head coaching) job. And he must have been calling every day, because Randy was always talking about him. And I was thinking like, “Virginia?” And he said, “Yeah, you’ve got to call him.” I finally said, ‘Okay, I’ll call him.’
So I talked to him, and we really made a good connection. Coach Garland is an awesome guy. He’s a smaller guy, too, and that’s one thing that really interested me, because I knew he could be a great workout partner. We just talked a lot on the phone, and I talked with their (lower-weight) assistant coach, Scott Moore. And they’ve got some good guys at 125 and 133 right now, guys like Ross Gitomer and Eric Albright.
WIN: When did you take your visit?
O’Donnell: I took my visit in mid-October. It was the fourth visit that I went on. Once I saw Virginia, it was just way better than all the other places I saw, and I was convinced.
WIN: You’re part of what’s going to be a great recruiting class, so it looks like they’re building a program with some depth.
O’Donnell: Yeah, that’s exciting, too. I’m proud to be part of such a good recruiting class, and I hope that we can go in there and really make a big difference and help turn the program around, and eventually become national champions.
WIN: You’re a very good student and Virginia is a great, great academic school, so that had to be a connection for you as well.
O’Donnell: I was also looking at some Ivy League schools, so I really wanted a school with good academics. Virginia is ranked No. 1 or No. 2 as far as public schools and their business and pre-law programs, which I might go into, are very good.
WIN: What’s your favorite subject?
O’Donnell: I like government classes, anything like that.
WIN: Your dad told me that you’re active in the German Club at school. Where did your interest in German come from?
O’Donnell: My older sisters took German in high school, and one of them traveled to Germany. My sisters were learning it, so I decided to learn it. I started it real basic, and now I’m in my fifth year of German. I went to Germany last summer for a couple of weeks.
WIN: What do you find so fascinating about the language?
O’Donnell: It’s more than just the language. It’s good to know more than one, but the culture in Germany that I learned about, the similarities and differences. It’s a neat country.
WIN: One thing (Oak Park) coach (Gary) Mayabb told me about you last summer was that you were the most organized kid he’d ever been around. With all the things you’re into, you have to have some skills in that area.
O’Donnell: Yeah, I like to be pretty organized, especially during the season, with school and wrestling and trying to keep good grades. I have to be organized or I’ll just go crazy. There are some guys on our team that aren’t, but I’ve just always been organized.
WIN: You and your teammate, Shane Nay, both finished with four state titles. Obviously, you’ve got a college career ahead of you, but you have to be proud of the fact that as far as your high school career in concerned, you went out there and sealed the deal.
O’Donnell: It really is. For me, it was real exciting, but it’s also kind of a big relief. There was a little pressure towards the end of the season, but I didn’t really feel any pressure going into the state tournament. All the training that went into it paid off, and I’m glad to know that what I was doing was worth it. So I’m glad it ended well.