BEREA (Oh.) – The Delaware Valley University men's wrestling team earned a runner-up finish at the Baldwin Wallace Invitational Saturday behind a first place showing from junior Russel Benson and second place medals for first-years Jackson Crawn and Ryan Kelly.

The Aggies accumulated 166.5 points as a team to finish one spot behind host Baldwin Wallace who took the team title with 493.5 points.

Benson won the 141-pound title, Kelly earned second at 125 pounds, Crawn took second at 197 pounds, while Rashad Stratton and Dan Eckley each took third at 133 pounds and heavy weight, respectively.

Benson improved to 9-1 on the year with four victories on Saturday. The junior began his day with a convincing 14-1 major decision then got his first pin of the season at 6:41 against Cainan Comerford of Baldwin Wallace. Benson met another BW Yellow Jacket in the next match in Conner Deboe and handled him with a 5-2 decision to advance to the finals. In the finals, he took down his third Baldwin Wallace student-athlete of the day in Zachary Anderson and took a comfortable 9-3 decision for the tournament title.

First-year Ryan Kelly entered the weekend 9-2 overall and impressed once again. The 125-pounder dominated his first match en route to a 15-0 tech. fall. He used a 9-2 decision over Brett Blaess of Baldwin Wallace to advance to the finals where he met another Yellow Jacket, top-seed, Jacob Decatur. Kelly gave Decatur a tough match, but dropped a 5-2 decision.

Jackson Crawn drew a first-round bye and needed to get past Mason Morris of Defiance to advance to the finals. He pinned Morris in 4:47 for his fourth win by fall this season. In the finals, he met Doug Byrne of Baldwin Wallace but suffered an early loss by fall to finish second overall.

Rashad Stratton, the Aggies 133-pounder, dropped his first match to eventual champion, Hunter Thompson, but battled through consolation with three straight victories to take third place. After a win by medical forfeit, Stratton earned a 7-3 decision over Devyn Giovengo of Thiel and then won the third place match with a tightly contested 4-2 decision over David Panda of host BW.

In the heavyweight bracket, Dan Eckley won his first two matches by fall to up his team-leading total to six on the year. He fell to eventual champion Jarod Miller of Baldwin Wallace in the semi-finals, but fought for a pair of tight 2-1 decisions in the consolation semis and finals to earn third place overall.

The Aggies will be back in action on Saturday, December 4 at the RIT Invitational.