‘We had those aspirations’: Cousins ready to put their imprint on Division I programs

ASHLAND – One is an Ohio State fan, the other a Michigan loyalist.

But with recent Ashland High grads Kadin Schmitz and Brady Welch — second cousins who seem more like brothers — it’s always been more about their shared interests and achievements.

Which are considerable.

From the time they were little kids playing on the same flag football and traveling baseball teams, or spending summers biking, boating and playing wiffle ball at family lake houses on Marblehead, or showing farm animals together for 4-H at the Ashland County Fair, there was always this unspoken goal of realizing enough success athletically to get a chance to compete at the Division I level in college.

Mission accomplished.

Welch, a state runner-up and the News Journal’s Co-Wrestler of the Year in 2021-22, is headed for Boone, North Carolina, home of Appalachian State, whose wrestling program had five qualifiers for the NCAA Championships in Detroit this past season.

Schmitz, a second team All-Ohio linebacker/safety in 2021, is headed east to continue his football career at the Naval Academy.

Family get-togethers over the holidays should be more special than ever.

“I can’t think of a particular instance where we talked about (our college pursuits), but (being part of a DI program) was always a goal,” Welch said. “When I was little I wanted to wrestle for Ohio State, being a Buckeye fan, and Kadin wanted to play football for Michigan.

“We always gave each other crap about the Big Game as long as I can remember. So, yeah, we definitely had those aspirations.”

Choosing a college

Welch, who hopes to become a commercial pilot, was considering Ohio State, Purdue and Ohio University, all of which have on-campus flight schools, and also did his homework on IIvy League schools.

“I wasn’t looking at (App State) at all, to be honest,” he said. “I still plan on being a pilot, so I’ll major in psychology and then attend flight school after I graduate.

“The Zoom call with the school really impressed me. All of the coaches were on there, along with a nutritionist and strength coach. They did a pretty good job of convincing me to take a visit.

“When I got on campus, I was honestly wowed. It felt like a great fit for me. Aspects of my personality would have been missing at a bigger school. I could have gone to Ohio State. They have an excellent program. But it didn’t feel like home. I’m not really a big city guy. App State had that brotherhood, the team aspect I was looking for.

“You want to go somewhere you’re wanted,” Welch said. “You want to go someplace where you can have a legitimate impact very quickly. App State sold me that my freshman year, or redshirt freshman year, I would have the opportunity to be a starter, the opportunity to make an impact.

“They are one of those teams that doesn’t get a lot of publicity in the wrestling community, but if you look at their body of work they’re doing pretty darn good. Combining that small time, underdog mentality with the actual success they’re having makes it a great place for me.”

Schmitz, who had 257 tackles over his last two years at Ashland, will start off at the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Newport, Rhode Island, where he will have a year to get acclimated to the demands and challenges that await when he arrives at the main campus in Annapolis, Maryland.

It is not unusual for athletic commits to get their start at the NAPS. According to a 2016 New York Times article, 75 percent of Navy’s football roster that year got its start through NAPS.

“I was at Navy, seriously, for about an hour and knew, in my heart, this is where I wanted to be,” Schmitz said. “I was a No. 1 priority at the time and that’s really what made my decision. The opportunity to go to an academy like that, and what it sets up for you, not just football, but life, it’s kind of hard to turn down.

“At the end of my phone call with (linebackers) coach (P.J.) Volker, he said, ‘I can tell you’re one of us.’ Out there, they’re big on character. It’s a tough place to go to school, and he got a grasp of my character and liked what he saw on film.”

Schmitz’ great grandfathers, Dean Welch and Richard Rogers, were in the Navy and stationed on the same ship in California.

“I remember as a kid growing up, seeing the Army-Navy game, and thinking that’s pretty cool, Schmitz said. “I always had some pride, knowing my great grandpas were in the Navy. But I didn’t think going into the recruiting process I wanted to go to an academy. I just wanted to play football, wherever I felt the best, wherever felt like family. I definitely feel I’m in the right spot.”

Schmitz plans to major in quantitative economics, having been drawn to that field of study because of his dad Matt’s background in business and sales. After receiving his undergraduate degree he plans to serve his five-year military obligation by joining the Marines.

As he prepares for the long haul, Schmitz can lean on the advice he received back in March from Col. Robert Springer, a former astronaut as well as an AHS and Naval Academy grad. They got a chance to chat one-on-one during Springer’s appearance at his alma mater.

“That was awesome,” Schmitz said. “He told me because it’s the military academy, they’re going to mess with you and try to bring you down. You’ve got to let it roll off your back and stay strong. Don’t let it bother you. You know who you are and you know you can do it. Just stay strong.”

Taking the same road

Interestingly, by committing to the Naval Academy, Schmitz is following a path that Welch took his first two and a half years of high school when he attended Culver (Indiana) Military Academy

He received a full academic scholarship to attend Culver, where he was able to reunite with wrestlers he had gotten to know over the years at the club level. Welch was part of one of the best freshman classes in the country at Culver, but even though he qualified twice for the Indiana state wrestling tournament, the program never reached its full potential, partly because of the pandemic.

“I was planning to stay at Culver,” Welch said. “I loved it there. I can’t say a bad thing about the place. The people were really awesome and I had great mentors. But things got shut down because of COVID. You couldn’t do anything. I wasn’t having the success I had worked for, so I made the decision to come back.”

No one was happier than Schmitz because it meant that they would have a chance to be teammates again like they were when they played in the YMCA flag football league and on the Mapleton Monsters traveling baseball team, coached by Kadin’s dad, Matt.

Even though it would mean only one varsity football season together, their lives had come full circle.

“I used to text him to come home,” Kadin said. “I was super jacked up when he texted me he was coming back.”

The homecoming meant just as much to Welch.

“We’re both super competitive dudes,” he said. “When we’re around each other, we’re going to push each other. It’s not that I lacked that at Culver, but it’s definitely a relationship I was excited to have back. Being able to spend time with him during football season was pretty awesome.”

Attending a military academy at the next level was never really in Welch’s plans.

“I considered it,” he said. “I had done the military school already, and it wasn’t like I disliked it, but I was ready to have the (typical) college experience.”

The genes fit perfectly

Schmitz and Welch come from a long line of fine athletes. Let’s connect the dots:

Schmitz’ mom, Missy, and Welch’s dad, Josh, are first cousins. They were members of the Mapleton Class of 1997 and had their graduation party together. That’s where Missy met her husband, Matt, the bass player in the band playing at the party.

Matt was a 1995 graduate of Ashland, where he played football and baseball. Missy’s brother, Chad Rogers, was a star football player and a state qualifier in track. Their parents, Rod and Julie Rogers, both made it to the state track meet as well.

Welch’s father, Josh, and grandfather, Jim, were both state-qualifying wrestlers, so Brady kept that tradition alive.

But the first person both boys need to thank for great genes is probably their great-grandmother, Doris Welch, who at 91 still tends to the daily chores at home on the farm with her husband, Dean, 92.

Doris was invited to play baseball for the Fort Wayne Daisies of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which inspired the 1992 movie classic "A League Of Their Own," starring Geena Davis and Tom Hanks.

With the U.S. involved in World War II, many of the major league executives started the women’s league to keep baseball in the public eye while many of the men were in the service.

Dean Welch was with the Navy, stationed in California at the time. Doris chose marriage over baseball and went with her husband when duty called him back to California.

“Honestly, both boys got their athletic genes from her,” Missy Schmitz said. “They (Doris and Dean) are prouder than a peacock about their great-grandsons. They beam when they talk about them. I also think it’s neat that Josh (Welch) and I were always so close and our boys have worked so hard to reach their goals.”

When the Schmitzes moved from Polk to Ashland as Kadin was finishing eighth grade, their new next door neighbors — iconic Ashland University coach Fred Martinelli, enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame, and his wife, Ruth — treated Kadin and his younger sister, Brooklyn, like great-grandchildren of their own.

“That was pretty awesome, having him for a next door neighbor,” Schmitz said of Martinelli, who passed away in May 2021 at 92. “Just to have our relationship blossom over the next couple of years was something I’ll cherish for the rest of my life. I remember him telling me the value of hard work and telling me some of his stories.”

It became a weekly tradition during football season for Kadin and his dad to go over to the Martinellis on Saturday morning to recap the game from the previous night and show him film of Kadin’s big hits.

“It’s something not a lot of people get to have, a person like that, with that much credibility, prestige in the craft, right there to teach you some things,” Schmitz said. “I have some questions today where I wish I could just walk over and talk to him about, but I can’t.”

Injuries have been no deterrent

You can’t talk about the success these two young men have enjoyed without also mentioning the hardship they’ve endured.

“I’m the most injury-prone guy ever,” Welch said. “But I’m doing everything I can to bullet-proof myself.”

You could feel the frustration dripping from that statement.

If not for injuries and Tiffin Columbian’s Brody Conley, Welch might have won state wrestling titles as a junior and senior for Ashland. Projected as a state finalist in Division II at 170 pounds, his junior season ended because of an injury in a 5-1 loss to Conley in the sectional finals.

This past season, Welch was 42-6, but he was sidelined for the area’s biggest showcase, the J.C. Gorman Invitational, as the Arrows rallied around his absence to win the tournament for the fifth year in a row.

In the postseason, Welch lost back-to-back-to-back in the Division II, 175-pound sectional, district and state finals to Conley, a repeat state champion, by a combined 10 points. After his 7-2 loss to Conley in the state title match, Welch revealed he competed in that bout with an injured hamstring.

Just getting to his senior wrestling season was a struggle. A few weeks before the start of the 2021 football season, he wrestled in the freestyle nationals at Fargo, North Dakota, with torn ligaments in both elbows, yet managed to win eight straight matches only to blow out his knee just one win shy of medaling.

Welch recovered in time to fill a hybrid defensive end/linebacker role in a couple of football games, playing alongside Schmitz, before deciding it was in his best interests to shut it down and save himself for wrestling.

“I’ve thought about the injuries, for sure. It would be hard not to,” Welch said. “I haven’t wrestled a state tournament in my entire high school career even close to healthy.”

At full strength, with a full slate of football games under his belt, Welch almost certainly would have joined Schmitz as an All-Ohioan.

“He put the entire team on his back against Lexington,” said Ryan Stackhouse, who spent the past three years as Ashland’s defensive coordinator. “He made play after play, a sack, forced a fumble, broke up a pass, made a couple of tackles for loss. He was everywhere. That helped us get back in the game and eventually win it.

“If he had been healthy, he would have averaged a sack a game, maybe a sack and a half, for sure. It wasn’t just his speed, but he was stronger than a lot of the guys he was going against, who were over 100 pounds bigger. He had that speed and he could knock you on your butt.”

Schmitz was always a quarterback coming up through the Mapleton district, but then he broke his throwing elbow in the third game of his freshman year with Ashland. He was never able to throw the ball as well after that and made the transition to defense his sophomore year.

As a junior safety, he made 143 tackles, three interceptions, three fumble recoveries, three tackles for loss and converted a fumble into a touchdown.

His senior year, serving as a hybrid linebacker/safety, he finished with 114 tackles, an interception, a forced fumble and three tackles for loss despite being sidelined for a couple of games at the start.

If healthy, Schmitz would have approached 140 tackles for a second straight season. But he tore a posterior cruciate ligament in his knee during a drill at a Duke football camp.

“He told me, ‘Dude, if you come back here and get me hurt, I’m going to be mad,” Welch said. “I felt like I was rubbing off on him a little bit.”

Schmitz started hitting the weights extra hard during the pandemic, eventually shooting up to 6-1, 220 pounds. His overall conditioning probably helped him to recover quicker when he did get hurt.

“My junior year the big thing with our defense was we had this insane energy,” Schmitz said. “My senior year we were kind of lacking that, but the few games I got to play with Brady he brought a lot of energy. We brought a lot of energy for each other.”

Schmitz was going to spend this past spring getting ready to play football for the Navy prep school. But he was talked into joining the track team as a shot putter and member of the 4x100 relay. Good thing because that relay set the Findlay High stadium record with a 42.66 in the district preliminaries before winning the championship at 43.13.

“He’s by far the hardest working kid we had in the entire high school,” Stackhouse said. “Both of them (Brady and Kadin) went hard at practice. There was no one who was going to top their intensity.”

That dedication and desire took shape back in grade school, when bragging rights were already at stake.

“I remember wrestling around with him,” Welch said. “I was the wrestler, he was the football guy. But he was always telling me he was better than me at wrestling, so we were always rolling around on the grass, that sort of thing.”

Just boys being boys, cousins acting more like brothers

This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Ashland cousins ready to put their imprint on Division I programs