Pembroke’s Joll named 2024 Schalles Award winner

By Mike Finn

Scott Joll read through the list of Schalles Award winners and gasped.

There are names like Wyatt Hendrickson, Jaydin Eierman and Bo Nickal, three wrestlers from NCAA Division I programs, respectively, like Air Force, Iowa and Penn State.

This year’s top pinner in NCAA wrestling, however, was Joll, a 174-pounder from UNC Pembroke.

Scott Joll (top) finished third at 174 pound at the NCAA Division II
Championships, where he got two of his season’s 21 falls and earned
the Gregorian Award and was named Division II’s Most Dominant Wrestler.

Joll recorded 21 falls during his 35-1 graduate campaign with the Division-II Braves. He was selected Division II’s Most Dominant Wrestler and won the Gregorian Award for most falls in the least amount of time at the NCAA championships.

Joll also de-throned two-time defending champion Wyatt Hendrickson for the 2024 Schalles Award, presented annually by WIN Magazine to the nation’s top pinner.

“It was kind of crazy,” Joll said of the news. “I had heard of the Schalles Award, but I wasn’t even familiar with it like that. I looked it up on the internet and saw the names … I was like, Oh.”

Joll believes that the end goal of a wrestling match is to pin one’s opponent. That result garners the most team points, after all, and the native of Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania prides himself on pursuit of falls.

“I’ve had a lot of people say a lot of different things about my wrestling, but no one has ever said I’m boring to watch,” Joll said. “I’ve always wrestled like that.”

All but two of Joll’s victories in 2023-24 came via bonus points. His 17 pins against Div. II competition won him the Most Falls Award.

“Every time (Joll) stepped out there, he was looking to find a way to get the bonus,” said UNC Pembroke head coach Othello “O.T.” Johnson. “If it wasn’t a major, it was a tech fall, if it wasn’t a tech, it was a pin. And he was able to get to the pin more times than not.”

Joll strung together six consecutive falls in early December before a streak of five in February. He’s the first non-Division I wrestler to win the Schalles Award since Marcus LeVesseur of NCAA Division III Augsburg College (Minn.) in 2005.

“I have to say I was excited to hear that Scott Joll is the winner of the Schalles Award; especially since he’s also a native Pennsylvanian,” said Wade Schalles, a two-time NCAA champion at Clarion (Pa.) for whom the award is named. The Distinguished Member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame went 153-6 during his career and pinned 109 foes.

“The voting was close as is the case most years and to go with an athlete from Division II is even more special for me, and a salute to his persistence and gamesmanship.”

Joll’s pin rate (nearly 60 percent) and 97 percent win-to-loss ratio stood out to Schalles.

“I wish him all the best as he prepares for life after college,” Schalles said. “Congratulations, champ.”

Pursuit of bonus points have long marked Joll’s wrestling, including during four years at West Virginia. There, he posted a 50-45 record, including 12 wins by fall.

What makes Joll so dangerous? He’ll catch you from any position.

“I think that’s what prevented coaches from scouting him,” Johnson said. “It was very difficult for anyone to come in with a strategy. He was never out of a match, and he was poised enough to let his moves build. He has turns on top and he has moves on his feet that he can hit to get guys to their back.”

Joll credited that largely to “play wrestling.” Moving away from traditional drilling, he said, and training in a style which put him in intricate positions and scrambles, helped develop him into a dangerous wrestler, especially at Pembroke.

“(Joll) learned some things later in his college career that he was fortunately able to utilize for us,” Johnson said. “I think once he realized some things that were holding him back, it allowed him to wrestle freely and not put external pressure on himself.”

Moving to North Carolina was a big change for Joll. He’d lived his entire life in southwestern Pennsylvania or northern West Virginia before relocating eight hours south.

Three familiar faces awaited him, though. Logan Seliga, Logan Hoffman and Chad Metikosh — all teammates of Joll’s at Belle Vernon — who also wrestled at Pembroke.

“I went to nationals with a kid who I graduated high school with,” Joll said. “Things like that are cool. It was an adjustment and a little rough at first, but I think this is the most fun I’ve ever had in a season of wrestling, and despite the outcomes, I wouldn’t change it.”

Joll’s only loss of 2023-24 came in the NCAA quarterfinals, a 12-10 defeat to Brody Hemauer of Wisconsin-Parkside. He bounced back with four consecutive victories to finish third, becoming the first non-national champion to win the Div. II Most Dominant Award.

Joll longed to help bring a team trophy to Pembroke, and he did that, the Braves finished second at the Super Region II tournament before placing 10^th at NCAAs. Now, he’s ready to give back.

Joll’s wrestling eligibility is gone, but he’ll remain at Pembroke next year as a coach while finishing his graduate degree.

“My mindset was to go try to win this, dominate everybody and be a difference-maker for a team,” Joll said. “A lot of times you don’t realize what you’re doing until you have to teach it to somebody. I think through teaching what I was doing to other people, I figured out how to wrestle better and more effectively.”