Tiger Style ended its second consecutive season with a 14th-place finish at the NCAA Championships. Some would see the same result as complacency, but when the eight new primary starters and injuries are factored in, the 2025-26 season can be seen as a strong building block for the young program.
Season at a Glance
Team record: 12-8 (5-3 Big 12)
Tournament team wins: Tiger Style Invite, Soldier Salute
National qualifiers: R-Fr Mack Mauger (125lbs), So Gage Walker (133lbs), R-Jr Cam Steed (174lbs), R-Fr Aeoden Sinclair
(184lbs), R-Sr Evan Bates (197lbs), R-So Jarrett Stoner (285lbs)
All Americans: R-Jr Cam Steed (fifth place, 174lbs) and R-Fr Aeoden Sinclair (third place, 184lbs)
Big 12 Champs team finish: Fourth place, 84.5 points
NCAA Champs team finish: 14th place, 34 points
The Peaks
Mizzou often has a “Guy” in the program who is head and shoulders above the pack. It was Keegan O’Toole from 2020-24 and J’den Cox from 2013-2017. He may not have won a national title in his premier starting season, but Aedoen Sinclair has the talent and moxie to be the Tigers’ superstar. The redshirt freshman only lost two matches the entire season – both to Iowa’s Angelo Ferrari – and was a constant threat to those ranked above him.
If Sinclair was the premier wrestler, then Cam Steed was the perfect co-star, even if it didn’t always look that way.
Steed began his season at the Tiger Style Invite, where he went 2-2 and was emotionally beaten down in the Hearnes Center. Head coach Brian Smith alluded that the redshirt junior was battling through an illness in the event.
He began to look like the wrestler who placed seventh at nationals in 2025 at the National Duals Invitational, but suffered an injury in the final dual against Illinois that left him sidelined for nearly two months. Steed returned for the final eight conference duals of the regular season. He went 7-1 with three wins by tech fall and two by fall. Success spilled over into the postseason with a Big 12 title and his best placement ever at nationals.
Outside of the All-Americans, Mizzou had a pair of young lightweights earn their first national qualifications in Mack Mauger and Gage Walker. It was Mauger’s first season as a full-time starter, and Walker was unexpectedly thrust into the starting lineup in January with the season-ending injury to Kade Moore.
Mauger’s marquee win always seemed to elude him, often being on the wrong end of upsets, but his impressive takedown power for a lightweight leaves plenty of room for progression.
Walker’s story in his true sophomore season wasn’t foreign to him. He was thrown in as the starter at 125lbs last season when Noah Surtin medically retired, going 11-11 overall. The move up to 133lbs saw Walker on the redshirt path behind Moore, but when he was called upon, he stepped up. Walker earned an automatic bid to nationals with a fifth-place finish at the Big 12 Tournament and won his first-round matchup in Cleveland, Ohio.
The Valleys
Most wrestling programs’ shortcomings are rooted in injuries, and the Tigers have become familiar with this in the past two seasons. While not on the same level as a season ago, Mizzou still had to deal with injuries to key contributors.
Joshua Edmond, J Conway, Max Mayfield, Steed and Moore all missed significant time. Steed managed to get past his absences and still qualify for nationals, but the others weren’t so lucky. Between the quartet of upperclassmen who didn’t earn NCAA qualification for this past postseason, they had a combined nine NCAA qualifications.
In Edmond’s case, there was something off since the start of his season. Only a few matches weren’t close, and he lacked the power that fans had been accustomed to seeing from him. He ended his career with Tiger Style, missing out on nationals with a seventh-place finish at the Big 12 Championship.
Conway’s season was one that was constantly changing. He started the season at 157lbs after a national qualifying 2024-25 campaign, but was swiftly injured at the Tiger Style Invite. He was only out for two weeks before coming back and wrestling strongly into the new year. Even then, the coaching staff decided to bring in Teague Travis for the spring semester to bolster the roster, taking Conway’s starting spot in the process.
His absence from the starting lineup was short-lived after Mayfield got injured in the Soldier Salute. Conway made the move up to 165lbs and filled in admirably, but once Mayfield came back in the regular season finale against Iowa State, it was clear that he gave Mizzou a better shot at a postseason berth, which essentially ended Conway’s season.
The letdown was that Mayfield and Travis faltered in the Big 12 tournament anyway, leaving the Tigers with no NCAA qualifier in the 157lbs or 165lbs divisions.
Moore is someone who fans have to empathize with after his season ended in late December. Consistency was a question for the redshirt junior, but he had some elite performances through his small sample size of matches. Most notably, Moore nearly pinned, at the time, No. 1 Lucas Byrd (ILL).
A poor display from Mizzou, unrelated to injuries, came in the form of the lack of a reliable starter at 141lbs. Easton Hilton, Zeke Seltzer, Owen Uhls and Seth Mendoza split time in the division. The 141lbs bout was nearly a guaranteed loss in every conference dual.
Glancing Ahead
The Tigers have plenty of turnover going into next season. They’re losing four starters to exhausted eligibility in Edmond, Travis, Mayfield and Bates. The transfer portal opened today, and it can be expected that some of Mizzou will search for replacements/upgrades, as well as have some depth pieces transfer out in search of new opportunities.
Nine seniors are graduating in total, which leaves nine known roster spots with the 30-man cap. The Tigers have a six-man incoming freshman class.
Tiger Style’s 2025–26 season wasn’t a plateau; rather, it laid the groundwork for a return to national contention as its young core demonstrated its potential.
