How Kollin Rath Out-scrambled Collin Gaj | HS PA State Finals 2024

So this year at 152 pounds, Kollin Rath and Collin Gaj both met in Pennsylvania state finals and they put on an absolute show. They are both state champs from the previous year, and the year before that they wrestled for 3rd or 4th, Rath being the victor. They have wrestled each other many times since, Rath usually taking wins by very small margins. Their ability to scramble through situations cannot be understated, this is a higher level than most college wrestlers, like 99% of them, and I’m not just saying that because they’re both my wrestlers.

Okay okay, let’s go back in time a little bit. Kollin Rath and Collin Gaj have both recently gone to Steller Trained, so it’s a common story on Flo that they’re practice partners with Marsteller as a coach. Marsteller has a bunch of my guys going there since I stepped back, so I’m honestly grateful that they have another place to meet up and work out together at. What you may not know though, is their understanding of each other goes back way beyond that. For 5 or 6 years before high school I trained both of them. You can see it in their technique and the way they wrestle, they are Red Hawk wrestlers, through and through.

I took over Red Hawk back in 2014, I think it was a year later Collin Gaj was going to our practices here and there and had just won his first state championship. Kollin Rath, who was more than a few weight classes lower, just got off the mat getting 2nd at states. I remember that tournament pretty vividly, Gaj won states because of a merkle, which was his favorite move at the time, he was down by a bunch of points before he got it and it won him the finals match, and then I worked with him for years afterwards to try to get him out of that habit because trying to do a merkle every match is a really bad idea. He got a few seconds in the years after, but did eventually win states again before high school. I didn’t know Rath that well yet, but him and my nephew Nathan Desmond were in the same weight class, if not one apart, I coached Nathan against him a few times, so I was already well aware of him, they would have super close matches. Rath was sick that weekend at states, but wrestled through states anyways, which is important to do by the way, it’s good practice for later when you may face that situation at an important tournament and don’t have the choice, Rath ended up getting 2nd at states that year. I coached Rath in state finals every single year from then on until high school. He got 2nd a bunch of times, but when he broke through and started getting 1sts, I was super happy for him. Anyways, that first year, in between matches he was throwing up in the bathroom, and man he showed so much toughness, I had to tell him how important it was that he went through that. I’ve said this before, you’d be surprised how well you can wrestle when you’re in “survival mode”. Rath is one of the toughest kids and hardest workers I’ve ever worked with. His mental toughness is insane, he would run through a wall if you told him to.

Fast forward about a year, Gaj and Rath were both at Red Hawk pretty regularly and I started giving one-on-one private lessons to both of them. Over the next 4 or 5 years I worked with both of them individually and in practice, until they hit high school. I had just gotten out of college, so I had a lot of college level information to offer the kids. I was good at scrambling and leg riding. So both of these guys got 5 years of experience scrambling with me, one-on-one, for an hour every week. Not to mention, I taught the entire room all of that stuff, so they all got good at it and spent an entire childhood with a level of scrambling that rivals most college wrestlers. People get pretty excited when they see 8 year olds doing jonesies and successfully diving for funk and whatnot, it’s not that hard to teach beginners advanced techniques. Most coaches dumb things down way too much. Kids can handle way more than you think they can. From the crack down to the shin whizzer to out the back door, offense and defense, how to transition between all three, how to turn one position into another to reset it a bit and gain some more footing, etc. On top of my already built up wealth of knowledge of scrambling, we identified problems and developed answers, and strengthened those 3 main scrambling positions to the point where they are today.

Gaj was a lot closer to Tyler Kasak’s weight, so he went with that bigger group of kids. And Rath was Nathan’s partner for the bulk of the next few years. It wasn’t until like 6th or 7th grade where Rath was big enough to go with Gaj, but they for sure had plenty of workouts together and were both state champs at that point, and with all of that knowledge of how to scramble, it was always fun to watch them scrap. Fast forward 3 years, they’re both in high school, both doing super well as are a lot of the kids that used to come to Red Hawk, and they both find themselves in the finals of states. This had to be one of those, “I’m not going a different weight, well I’m not going a different one either, well I guess we’re going to see each other in the finals, I guess so” kind of things. I’m pretty sure both of them would win states at a lower or higher weight class, but no, this one was for themselves, this one was for the fans. And scrap they did.

15 seconds in, Gaj grabs a righty collar tie, Rath goes over-tie. With this over–tie you have a lot of options, you can go to the inside elbow with your right, go hip to hip, face away, and do a slide-by, if your opponent reacts well you can attack a far single, but not doing anything with an over-tie is becoming a bigger issue these days because of what Gaj does. He lifts the elbow with his elbow and shoots a beautiful lefty high crotch. Gaj tries to convert it into a single, we used to call it a knee pull single, but Rath’s already circling to the right, which allows him to step out of the shot mid-conversion. I want to say this is a lucky step out, Gaj didn’t have much control over the initial part of the shot.

Rath correctly circles away from the shot, you’re always supposed to circle away from whatever leg your opponent is attacking. This helps stretch your opponent out and makes it difficult for them to keep a good grip. You keep your knees off the mat, throw your opposite hip down, lift the near ankle to break your opponent down, then lift the far elbow to further stretch your opponent’s shoulder out and make them decide to let go. Top tier wrestlers have such a good grip, you have to make them decide to let go, that’s why attacking the wrist when they’re on your leg doesn't get you very far.

Rath isn’t able to get that far though. Gaj is able to keep a piece of the knee and stabilize himself under Rath and lift him up for the out the back door position. Here Gaj would be looking to isolate a leg, pull the foot down at the heel, step over, turk, keep his head up, push that top leg forward to pop his head out, then swim the inside arm out to a cross-face to get a takedown. Rath should be looking to lock hands around the body, hopefully trap an arm, go winn-dixie or pop off to the trapped arm side to circle around for a go behind.

Gaj knows this though, so he keeps both arms up and so Rath is limited to a chest wrap and looks for an ankle. You would use that ankle to try to funk if the situation falls on its side. As Gaj advances to the turk, Rath knows he can’t hang out here for very long, the situation will get very solid for Gaj very quickly, so he lets go of everything, steps his free leg away, and starts kicking away a little bit. The kicking Rath is doing is not meant to get him free, although if he gets lucky it can, but it’s more meant to keep his free leg away so Gaj can’t secure both legs and get a quick takedown. It’s also meant to create a little bit of separation so he can sneak in a shin whizzer as Gaj starts to attack the far leg. It opens up the situation a little bit. Notice how Rath circles toward the leg that Gaj has control of. This keeps Rath going in a circle and therefore in bounds so he’s not vulnerable to giving up a fleeing the mat call or a stall call. This also keeps his free leg farther away from Gaj’s reach. If you circle towards the leg that’s free your legs tend to float together, making it easier for someone to wrap them up.

Rath goes for the whizzer as Gaj comes up with the leg, very smart, a single leg is much easier to finish if you can turn it into a high single. When you’re on the mat you have to deal with all the shin whizzer shenanigans. Gaj immediately goes for a front trip, which is usually a good idea, when you lift a leg up to a high single, the earlier to go to trip the better, you want to trip before your opponent gets a stable footing. The better trip to go for though is the back trip. If you do a front trip, a savvy scrambler can use that trip against you, use the forward momentum to dive under, into a forward flip, aiming at an ankle for funk, and that’s exactly what Rath does. Notice how he starts his roll underneath Gaj and not away from him, you want to land as close to the ankle as you can so it’s harder for them to drop to a knee, catch a cross-face, and get an easy takedown.

Here we have a funk battle, the winner here is the one who’s able to maintain height, keep control of the leg and/or hips, and find their way to a cross face. Gaj is in the ideal position, he should be looking to keep the leg he has and find his way to a navy ride with his left arm, which is when you hook underneath the far leg. That secures the hips, makes it so your opponent trying to funk can’t roll away from you, is forced to roll into you, and then you can convert to a low leg grip and find a cross-face or low leg cradle if they’re not being careful. Gaj isn’t looking for that though. Rath holds position, Gaj steps back over to come out the back door. You can look for a cross face cradle here if you’re able to put enough forward pressure together, but Gaj doesn’t go for that either. Rath kicks over the body, keeps the ankle, refunks, pushes the hip away with his top foot, this extends the leg he has control of and makes funk easier because they can’t turn their hip down and bend their knee all wonky and get free or a potentially dangerous call, then he starts trying to come up as well. Gaj rolls back under and refunks again, finds himself in a low leg single position. Here you would try to pull your hips back, get your head in the knee, push it down to the mat, go to a tripod, then circle to the double. Creating distance here is what you need to do, but Rath keeps his leg straight, which puts pressure on the head and makes it difficult for Gaj to come up, and grabs a crotch lock. Gaj really should lift the right leg up, turn to the right, where he would reset things and find himself in another outside single position, where I imagine Rath would again try to kick a little and then look for a shin whizzer. Rath could step over that near leg, dig his right arm under the body and grab his own leg, and look to get a cradle with one arm and one leg, but he doesn’t advance to it. You can also lift that near leg to a near side cradle like Sammy Sasso used to do. Scrambling takes a lot of energy and so the mutual pausing here might just be because they’re both getting a little tired.

This scramble doesn’t end with any points, but as you can see, they both know the ins and outs of every single scrambling position super well, and this is the result of that. Gaj missed 3 opportunities and was on the attack for a lot of the scramble, and Rath did a really good job escaping out of situations to keep the scramble going, but he missed a few opportunities as well. Opportunities missed might just be because I haven’t done private lessons with them in a few years. You tend to forget things when you don’t keep going over them. This is all of the same stuff we went over for years and years, this is basically how it looked when I scrambled with these guys. I would try to keep the scramble going for as long as I could, and would give them opportunities to get the upper hand so they could get comfortable with all of the situations. This was a better scramble than any I saw at NCAA’s, in terms of both knowledge, understanding of the situations, and execution, and we’re barely a minute into the match.

The next scramble happens not long after. Gaj takes the same shot, gets on the same leg, but this time is deeper and so Rath isn’t able to step out like he did before. Rath should be looking for something to create a better position for him, but he doesn’t go for it. He could dive over top and force Gaj out the back door again. Out the back door defense is incredibly strong when you get good at it, Gaj got so good at defending the out the back door position that he would score on me with it when he was in 8th grade. He could dig behind the shoulder and force a shin whizzer, or he could try to push the head to the outside and force a crackdown. When you’re in a defensive position you need to attack it with confidence as if it's an offensive position. Rath doesn’t do that though, he kind of just hangs out, which I don’t recommend. You do not want to sit around and wait for something to happen, nothing good usually happens when you do that.

Gaj comes up to a high single, goes to run the pike, then reaches across for the far leg. Transitioning through finishes is very important. Rath could forward roll here, kick the arm over top to create some funk, but doesn’t. Instead Rath reaches back for the whizzer to stabilize, Gaj comes up, then Rath starts to kick a little like he did before. This gets a little interesting, Rath goes for a high crotch across the body. I seriously don’t recommend you do this, because Gaj could quick change his grip for a near cradle, which he may or may not get, but it would force Rath to let go of the leg and bail and would give Gaj a good chance to get an easy takedown from here. If Rath doesn’t let go, he’s getting cradled, but instead Gaj starts coming up, Rath does a forward roll, and then we’re back into this funk battle. Keep the leg, maintain height, control hips, find a cross-face, but neither of them do.

Period runs out, score is 0-0, after an incredible amount of action already.

Second period, Rath gets choice, chooses down. Down is always a good choice when it’s 0-0 in the second. If you get that escape you get first score and then have choice in overtime. Gaj is really good on top, but he elects to just cut Rath at the start of the period. Score is 1-0 Rath.

I assume he’s weighing the cost of the amount of energy it’ll take to try to ride out Rath out for the period and whether or not that will be worth it. There’s no riding time, so at best you’re spending a lot of energy to save one point. Rath is amazingly good at getting to his feet on bottom, he never gets tired, or at least never shows it, so if you have a difficult time keeping him down, which pretty much everyone does, it might make sense to conserve your energy, let him go at the start of the period, and try to settle things in neutral. Gaj has been the aggressor so far in this match, the one taking the most shots, so that’s momentum he should be trying to keep going.

I gotta be honest, not much happens in the second period. Again, it takes a lot of energy to scramble, so this is a mutual understanding they both have currently, they’re both more willing to let things get settled in the third period.

Gaj gets choice, chooses down. Gotta get that point back to tie the score, which he does. He’s able to get to his feet, post the hands, and get his 1. Score is tied 1-1.

10 seconds into the first, Gaj has a tight lefty collar tie, and outside control on the right. He keeps it tight, looks away, goes hip to hip, and pulls the elbow through for a slide-by. This is similar to the slide-by we saw Jax Forrest do to Tomasello. I started doing this at one point with Tyler Kasak, who got really good at this too by the way, then I started teaching it to everyone else. I think it was Kaid Brock I saw do it, from Oklahoma State. He did it a bunch back then and so I started playing around with the idea. You can do it in this situation, or when your opponent has a collar tie and puts too much pressure into you, you go quick grab the collar then grab the elbow, look away, and pull. It’s also really good if you have the outside elbow and your opponent goes high crotch on that side, you downblock, then slide-by. It’s just super slick overall and it’s difficult to feel coming, which is why it works so well. It’s different from the Easton shrug where you hook over top of the arm and grab the tricep in the way that it doesn’t keep you stuck in that position, it’s a lot less visible that you’re going to try it, and you can go to a pass-by or elbow pop if you’re not feeling the pressure you want, so you have other options at the same time. That right elbow is so vulnerable, having outside control there is so strong if you know how to use all of the options. If your coach is telling you inside control is what you always need, he’s sorely mistaken and stuck in the past, outside control tends to give more options.

Gaj gets around behind but Rath immediately does a granby roll, which Gaj tries to roll with, but just isn’t able to get ahead of it. As Gaj feels the pressure start to go under, he has to get both feet off of the mat, keep his knees on either side of Rath’s hips, tuck his head a little so he doesn’t face plant, and just float with the roll, but Rath is half a second ahead and so he’s able to get his hips out of Gaj’s control, keep the leg elevated, and get his takedown. This happened so quick during the match that I didn’t really understand what he did until I slowed it down and watched it later. It’s just a basic granby roll, I thought it was something else, but it just happened to work super well for Rath. I’ve mentioned Rath in this regard in other videos, if someone gets around behind you and you’re not taken down yet, you still have a chance to separate hands and not give up anything, or go for a random roll to create some chaos to hopefully find yourself into a scramble again, or you could go for a quick switch there as well. Rath does such a good job of reacting to this situation. Score is 3-1 Rath.

Gaj works his way back to his feet, gets another escape, score is 3-2 Rath.

40 seconds left, Gaj fakes a lefty single, then attacks that same lefty high crotch. Elevates it to out the back door again. Rath gets a piece of that ankle with a crotch lock, Gaj doesn’t try to go to a turk position this time, instead locks his hands up and falls to the side, keeps his hips up, pops his head out, but Rath keeps that far ankle, pushes his hips in, which forces Gaj to his butt and then his side. Gaj honestly should have went back to that turk position again, but I’m guessing he’s either tired or just trying something different. Rath should be looking for a cross face here, but instead he’s focusing on the low leg, trying to get to a turk. You don’t actually need the turk at this point, a quick cross face will secure the position enough for the takedown, but he goes for it anyways. Gaj gets his hips up, has a leg in, and almost spins around for the takedown, but Rath starts going for a quick switch. Gaj needs to get a cross face here to pull Rath down to the right and solidify his takedown, but isn’t really going for it, even after he laces his leg in and puts hip pressure, which Rath uses to roll Gaj and keep the scramble going. The situation keeps going, and unfortunately for Gaj, his leg slips out, which allows Rath to free his hips and turn a situation where Gaj was 99% at a takedown, into nothing again because they’re both facing opposite directions. When you get a leg in it’s important that you secure that leg by doing a figure four or at least locking your legs up. They are both very familiar with leg riding and this switch-reswitch battle, so I’m surprised neither of them are able to get that cross-face. Rath holds on as the clock winds down for the 3-2 victory.

Initially when I watched this match at normal speed, I felt like Gaj should have gotten that takedown at the end, but watching it now I can see the refs did a good job holding points. A basic cross-face does such a good job of stopping scrambles and securing takedowns, and I think that’s what Gaj was missing a little here. He got himself into so many good situations, and yet Rath was able to scramble out of them time and time again to find the victory. I think Rath didn’t shoot as much as he should. Which I can kind of understand because Gaj, like Rath, is so good at scrambling defensively, that getting into a bad shot because you forced it will get you taken down, but still, you have to be attacking anyways.

This was a crazy match for sure, and they are both so incredibly good at scrambling, but you can also see there are a ton of opportunities that they still missed along the way, a ton of ways they could have stopped the scrambles dead and secured the takedown. For me, it was cool knowing that either way one of them would be a state champ again, so I wasn’t really rooting for anyone in particular, but it was cool to see all of those crazy positions play out.

Easter egg time! This punching of the mat by Kollin Rath by the way, he’s been doing that after matches since he was super little. I remember one match he punched the mat in the exact same way and the ref gave a team point because he thought he saw Kollin punch the other kid out of the corner of his eye. Funny little story, we were all like, what are you talking about? He hit the mat. The ref waived that point after a little discussion but still, it made me laugh seeing that.