Is 200 just a number? Ashland’s Seder puts wrestlers ahead of coaching milestone
ASHLAND — Watch out, Louie, he’s coming for you.
Even though Sean Seder’s 200th career victory as a high school wrestling coach came and went this season without any fanfare – just as he wanted – the milestone win meant something special to Ashland’s veteran leader in one respect.
It drew him closer to his mentor’s career mark.
Well, a little closer.
Louie Stanley, Seder’s wrestling coach at Waynedale (Class of 2004), is one of just four wrestling coaches ever in Ohio to amass over 500 victories.
“I’d love to compete with Louie someday,” Seder said, “but that’s going to probably take another 10 to 15 years.”
Everything points to Seder being in it for the long haul, three reasons in particular: One, because he has been wildly successful in a relatively short amount of time. Two, because of the staying power of role models like Stanley, who is still at it, and Seder’s father, Bill Jr., who won 106 games and six Wayne County Athletic League titles in 16 years as head football coach at Waynedale.
And, three, Seder genuinely loves the bond forged with his athletes.
While winning conference championships and sending a boatload of wrestlers to the state tournament might mean more to fans, ask Seder for one highlight in his career and he goes to a moment that probably wouldn’t even be on the radar for most.
It was Ashland’s win over Steubenville for third place in the 2021 State Duals.
“It was the atmosphere from the team side of it,” Seder said. “It was going back and forth, a really close dual. All of a sudden we went on a spree and had three or four pins in a row.
“I’ll never forget it. Jake Bever was our heavyweight, but he got banged up, so we told Hayden Hensel, our current heavyweight, to go out and get the last match because we had already locked up the dual.
“The kid he’s facing is ranked 11th in the state and Hayden was our backup, so we’re obviously thinking, we’ve already won this thing, no big deal (if he loses). He goes out and head-and-arms the kid and pins him in 30 seconds. Everybody was losing their mind. It was just an amazing atmosphere. You would have thought we won the Super Bowl.”
Arrows’ winningest coach ever
Looking back now, it’s one of 207 wins on his ledger. The first 37 came in two and a half seasons as a head coach in Texas and the last 170 – a school record – over the last nine seasons in Ashland.
Seder’s wife, Megan, recently found some unaccounted wins from when he was in Texas and the discovery put his victory total over 200. It would have made for a belated ceremony, not that he ever wants to draw attention to himself.
Like many coaches’ wives, Megan puts together the scrapbooks and documents the achievements because their husbands can’t be bothered.
To this day, Seder can’t tell you the specific match where he rang up No. 200. It’s not like he was going to ask for a parade down Main Street anyways. Or even a designer cupcake.
“To be honest, it’s not that big a deal to me. I’m not that guy,” he said. “I don’t even know if the kids knew about (the milestone). I like to make it more about them.”
Seder and his long-time right-hand man, Clell Cox, are simpatico in that way.
“To me, it’s always been about the program and kids,” said Cox, who has spent the better part of the past two decades helping his alma mater (he was a third-place state medalist in 1997) at the youth level and/or as a varsity assistant, the last eight with Seder. “I could care less about stats. I’m not a stat guy. I just want the best for the kids.
“That’s the nice thing. Sean and I are on the same page. Along the way, we’ve built some really good wrestling teams. With him doing his thing and me doing mine, it’s worked out fantastic.”
Seder and Cox formed a partnership in Seder’s second year at Ashland, which is when the Arrows won the first of four straight Ohio Cardinal Conference championships, ending Lexington’s seven-year reign.
As you can imagine, it was a little daunting for Seder coming home from Texas and inheriting an Ashland wrestling program that, like all the others in the OCC, was looking up at Lexington, with its multiple state champs and its stature as an Ohio powerhouse.
But it only took two seasons under Seder for the Arrows to break through and end that dynasty.
“Lex had a heckuva program, so we had to be good really quick,” Seder said. “We had some great kids, great families and great coaches. I told the kids if you want to be the best in the state, let’s try and emulate and do what the best teams do. We started going to (St. Paris) Graham (a state and national power) and tried to follow similar styles and techniques.
“Waynedale copied what they did at Graham and I figured if they could do it, we could do it.”
‘Killers on the mat’
The Arrows will be gunning for their sixth title in eight years when they host the OCC tournament on Saturday. They have several weight class contenders, led by three-time state qualifier Jon Metzger (157), state qualifier Roman Parobek (126) and his twin brother Milan (132), state alternate Korbyn Jones (120), Angelo Seitz (175), state qualifier Cayden Spotts (215) and Hensel (285).
With a little luck the Arrows would be looking for their seventh conference crown under Seder, but they lost by 1.5 points last year to West Holmes without Roman Parobek, sidelined by illness.
Over this same dominant stretch the Arrows won a record five straight titles in one of Ohio’s oldest regular season tournaments, the local J.C. Gorman Invitational (2017-22), eclipsing the two four-peats achieved by Lex over a nine-year period.
Ashland almost certainly would have made it six Gorman championships in a row if not for the 2021 tournament being canceled because of the pandemic.
“We became more physical; we wanted to be killers on the mat,” Cox said of a change in philosophy under Seder. “We wanted to pin people at all times. When we decided we wanted to be dominant on top and pin people, it changed our attitude. It evolved from being technical to being a strong, gritty wrestling team.
“We’re not fancy, we’re not flashy. We’ve conditioned well and we’re going to look to put you away if we get that opportunity. That came a lot from Sean.”
Seder played football for his father at Waynedale and also wrestled and played baseball. The best part of that experience was learning at the feet of a couple of masters – his dad and Coach Stanley.
“I was my dad’s water boy from the time I was 4 or 5 and some of the relationships he had with his kids, I could see how much they loved him,” Seder said. “I wanted to have an impact on kids like that. I always aspired to be like him.”
A quarterback growing up, Seder moved to wide receiver in high school so that he could play the same position where his father excelled for Ashland HS and his grandfather, Bill Sr., starred for Ashland College. He even attended Ohio University like his father.
It’s largely from them that he got the coaching bug. Bill Sr. was the head football coach at Crestview.
“(Sean) chose to follow in my footsteps and I did the same with my father,” said Bill Jr., the Mount Vernon Schools superintendent. “I was his waterboy. I got to see how he interacted with his players and the respect they had for him. You become impacted by those special people around you,
“Sean was around coaching all of his life and probably when he got to high school I could see him taking a real interest in the nuances of the game, the strategy behind it.”
Seder knew his competitive days were ending after high school and that coaching would be his way to stay involved.
“One of the things I laugh about is that as an actual competitor, I was an average wrestler at best, but I more or less learned from a lot of good guys and fell in love with the sport,” Seder said. “When I went to Texas I saw some of the football players wrestling and jumped in and asked to help out.”
Texas was good proving ground
Seder ended up in Texas through a job fair at Ohio U. It was merely coincidence he landed in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, just 45 minutes from where his uncle Tim, an Ashland High/Ashland University grad and former kicker for the Cowboys, was teaching and coaching.
Seder was originally a football and softball coach at Carter Riverside HS, but eventually took over the wrestling program when the head coach had to step aside for family reasons. The school had gone more than a decade without a state qualifier, but in his two full seasons as coach he produced seven.
Seder also started a girls wrestling team and boasted four state qualifiers in only the team’s second year of existence. One of the girls he helped develop went on to win a state title after his departure.
Sean and Megan, who have known each other since elementary school and were in the same graduating class at Waynedale, decided to leave Texas after five years and come back to Ohio to be closer to family. They have a daughter, Leighton, who will be a high school freshman next year, and a son, Kannon, who is turning 5.
Seder took a job at his father’s alma mater and has been at Ashland HS ever since. His arrival couldn’t have been more welcomed because it mercifully stopped the revolving door in wrestling that spit out four head coaches in four years.
Seder has also spent all nine years at Ashland coaching football – the first five as an assistant to Scott Valentine and the last four as head coach, where he posted a winning record, earned a share of an OCC title and twice made the playoffs, reaching the regional semifinals in 2020.
Even though that head coaching stint is over, Seder has not closed the door on coaching football again. He would like to continue doing both sports at a time when a lot of coaches have decided to focus on one.
“It boils down to ever since I started doing both people would ask, which one is your favorite? And my answer is, whichever one is in season, just because I love them both and I think they play well together,” Seder said.
“One of the best football teams I’ve had had really good wrestlers, just because they’re tough kids. It’s that blue-collar mentality I was raised with. If something needs done, you do it. I’ve just always been that way and I think that’s why I gravitated to those two sports.”
Clearing the bar
Bill Seder Sr., who played four sports at Ashland College, and Tim Seder, who was a standout kicker for the Eagles, are in the Ashland University Hall of Fame. Bill Jr. is in the Ashland County Hall of Fame after earning first team All-Ohio honors in football and going on to a fine career at Ohio U.
Remarkably, Sean has managed to clear the bar they set high.
In addition to the five conference and five Gorman championships, he has coached the Arrow wrestlers to six sectional titles, two district titles and three top five finishes in the State Duals. He’s been OCC Coach of the Year five times and has produced 28 state qualifiers and 12 state placers, including a state champion in Josh Bever (2019) and two runners-up in Sid Ohl (2017) and Brady Welch (2022).
“I’ve grown to love wrestling over the past number of years,” said Bill Jr., whose talents leaned toward basketball instead of wrestling at Ashland HS. “Watching Sean wrestle and then coach, there’s a special bond and brotherhood on a wrestling team. That unique bond is something I think everyone would desire.
“He’ll be the first to tell me it’s about his kids, his coaches, about the program. He’s just been blessed to be the shepherd of it.”
Seder’s legacy is built around kids like Metzger, a 4.0 student, first team All-Ohio receiver, and 2022 state medalist in wrestling. He has a good chance this spring to earn All-Ohio in a third sport, baseball.
“I spent eight of my high school sports seasons with him, so I know him pretty well,” Metzger said of Seder. “He’s great, super personal with the kids, just an awesome guy in general. Everybody on the team has his back and he always has ours
“Our relationship probably wasn’t as much about playing the same position (in football) as it was the two-sport crossover. Not many (football players) wrestled, but I had the privilege of getting to know him really well in wrestling and in football, and it’s grown from there.”
Anybody watching an Ashland wrestling match for the first time and seeing Seder and Cox in the coaching corner together would swear Cox was the head coach. He’s much more animated, more vocal. Seder mostly chills.
“You see the other side, but Clell overshadows him a lot,” Metzger said. “That dude is always going to be the loudest guy in the building, wherever you’re at. They’re a great match. Clell’s a great coach. Sean’s more of a behind-the-scenes guy, but he’ll get feisty if he needs to.”
He rarely needs to, so stories about his rants peeling paint off the wall are non-existent.
“You work with a guy for eight years, you’d think you’d have a lot of great stories,” Cox said, “but Sean keeps everything really close to the vest. If I had to talk about what he does best, it’s his relationship with the kids, the way he interacts with them all. And now we have a lot of alumni coming back. They still come back to see him and have that positive interaction.
“That’s the beauty of Sean. He’ll let me do what I do and he does a lot behind the scenes that no one ever sees.”
If it were up to Seder, you’d never hear about his milestones either.
This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Is 200 just a number? Ashland’s Seder puts wrestlers ahead of coaching milestone
