Re-Ranking Recruits from the Class of 2021

One of the longstanding traditions at InterMat is the re-ranking of high school recruiting classes five years after the wrestlers enrolled in college. This class is different from some of its recent predecessors because it's on the other side of the post-Covid extra year of eligibility. Those other classes had large chunks of wrestlers that still had another year of eligibility remaining. The 2021 class has only a few who maintain eligibility due to injury waivers. So we’re almost back to some level of normalcy with wrestling recruiting.

I’ll say it now, overall, this group turned out to be one of the weakest recruiting classes in recent memory. At least for top-tier production. There are lots of wrestlers from 2021 that turned out to be quality DI wrestlers, but it lacks the star power of most classes I’ve seen in more than two decades of following wrestling recruiting.

I’m sure some of this could be attributed to stars from previous recruiting classes holding extra eligibility due to the Covid year. Part of that is correct.

This class only produced two NCAA champions and four national finalists. For comparison’s sake, the 2024 and 2025 classes already have two NCAA champions.

On a more positive note, as the years pass, there are fewer and fewer misses at the top of these rankings. More competitions at the high school level and more video allow for better evaluation of prospects. That is reflected in the top ten of this weight, where only one of those wrestlers did not qualify for multiple NCAA tournaments.

Looking at the top group from the Class of 2021, it’s really a two-horse race as to who should hold the #1 spot during our re-ranking. Dean Hamiti and Mikey Caliendo are the options. The points for Hamiti are that he finished as a national champion, owns a Big Ten title, and he never redshirted. Caliendo earned All-American honors four times, made two finals, and happened to be at the same weight as the 2026 Hodge Trophy winner, Mitchell Mesenbrink.

If we were to look at this recruiting class a year from now, that top spot might be different. Shayne Van Ness is expected to receive another year of eligibility and a national title would be enough to push him into the #1 spot. There are some other notables that are still active, but they wouldn’t unseat Hamiti/Caliendo, even with a title.

So, let’s get down to it! Below are the top 40 wrestlers from the Class of 2021, re-ranked after considering their collegiate accomplishments. They are listed along with the schools they attended, along with their original high school class ranking via Willie Saylor’s MatScouts site.

After the top 40 is a list of the top 50 from 2021. On that list, wrestlers are noted by the schools they initially signed with.

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