Should I stay or should I go?

That is the question 141-pound Ohio native Josh Wooton asked himself over and over again.

He had to decide whether to wrestle at an in-state school such as Kent State or an out-of-state school such as Northwestern, Purdue or NIU.

He chose NIU because the coaches here reminded him the most of his high school coach, Jeff Jordan.

“A couple of schools I visited, the kids weren’t very tight knit,” Wooton said. “Some of the coaches seemed a little shady, I heard some bad things about them. When I came to NIU, all of us were together, it was like a big family and the coaches were real honest.”

Everything that Wooton learned on the mat before his voyage to NIU, he learned from Jordan.

Jordan, who Wooton described as the best guy he knows, was a two-time All-American at the University of Wisconsin.

After his wrestling days were over, he went on to coach at Purdue, then later at St. Paris Graham High School.

The Huskies are going to have another tie to St. Paris Graham High School next year as one of Wooton’s friends and former teammates, Kalen Knull, will be joining sides with Wooton once again.

When Wooton decided to come to NIU, he had another choice to make.

“Coach Grant would have let me wrestle if I wanted to,” said Wooton about his freshman year. “I thought that just getting into college, it would be smart to see if I could do all the things I needed to, so I chose to redshirt.”

His reason for redshirting was that he was seven hours away from home and wasn’t sure how he would adjust. He also wanted to concentrate on his schoolwork and find out what the routine of going to classes and practice every day was like.

While he was getting used to his routine, he picked things up from the coaching staff and some of the other wrestlers on the mat.

“It helped me a lot because I got to work with [Scott] Owen and the other starters,” Wooton said. “But, I didn’t get thrown out there as a freshman, so that also helped.”

After redshirting his freshman season, Wooton has emerged as one of the most talented young wrestlers in the 141-pound weight class.

Last Friday, No. 19 ranked Wooton upset the No.1-ranked wrestler in his weight class, Jason Mester, with a final of 8-3.

One of only three underclassmen in the top 20 for the 141-pound weight class, the only other freshman is first ranked Zack Esposito from Oklahoma State.

Seeing the success that Wooton has experienced this season, some of the other NIU redshirts think that it could benefit them. Sam Hiatt’s little brother, Andy, a 141-pounder, is redshirting this season and thinks that it is a wise choice.

“I think that redshirting as a freshman is important because it gets you used to college wrestling,” Hiatt said. “When you start out right away as a freshman, you don’t really know the difference between high school and college wrestling.”