The dust has settled. All of the matches are done, and all of the bouts are won. The tournaments are decided, and for the wrestling team, it’s another year without a national title.

The Blue and Gold finished sixth at last weekend’s NCAA Championships for the second consecutive year, and though the team did not accomplish its ultimate goal, the athletes aren’t hanging their heads wondering, “What if?”

Four of the five wrestlers the Blue and Gold took to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, were recognized as All-Americans, placing in the top eight of their respective weight classes.

“I felt we did our job,” junior Jeremy Stierly said. “We placed four out of the five guys. [Senior tri-captain Jon] Gregory was just really having a tough time with his [neck] injuries and stuff.”

Stierly was the team’s top finisher, earning second place at 141 pounds.

The other three wrestlers who placed were: senior tri-captain Chad Winowich at sixth place (133 pounds), junior Blaine Woszczak at fourth place (149 pounds) and junior Willie Horwath at seventh place (157 pounds).

The team’s biggest question is how its title run would have fared if more than five wrestlers qualified for the NCAA tournament.

“We would’ve given them a run for their money,” Stierly said.

Stierly said the question of “What if?” is being brought up because the five teams in front of the Bombers all brought more than five wrestlers to the NCAAs.

But national championship or not, the Bombers had a successful year. The season featured both Woszczak and Horwath surpassing the 100-career-wins plateau and saw Woszczak ranked No. 1 at 149 pounds for the majority of the season.

Other season highlights included Stierly emerging as a dominant force on the mat and finishing one win away from being crowned an individual national champion, Head Coach Marty Nichols becoming the winningest coach in Ithaca College wrestling history and the squad reaching 20 dual-meet victories on the year.

“The high point teamwise was definitely our dual-meet season,” Horwath said. “We lost one dual meet this year and that was to [SUNY-Binghamton] … all our other matches were if we were at full strength. There weren’t too many teams we wrestled this year that kept it close, so that was the high point.”

Another high point was seeing Gregory rebound, after missing almost all of last year because of herniated disks in his neck, and compete at nationals at 125 pounds.

“Jon was hurt and wrestled like a trooper,” Winowich said. “The kid is the heart and soul of the team.”

Stierly said Gregory motivates everyone as a captain and leader both on and off the mat.

“I wish he could be feeling a little better when we went out there [to Iowa],” Stierly said. “He’s the heart and soul of the team. That’s why he’s a captain. He’s there for each one of us, and I don’t know if we would’ve placed as high as we needed to do unless he was there motivating us all year. I could tell you every single time that I was wrestling I could hear him up in the stands or out on the side of the mat yelling for me.”

Despite the loss of an impressive senior class of Gregory, Winowich, Horwath, John Dale, David Sbriscia and tri-captain Joe Goetz, the Blue and Gold are poised to improve and win that national championship, which has eluded the team since 1994.

“As a team, we’ve come a long way,” Winowich said. “For the first half of the lineup to clinch sixth [at nationals] is pretty impressive, but we’ve been improving the last few years, [and] next year is going to be even better for the boys.”