Isaac all smiles as she helps build Wheeling’s first women’s team

Savannah Isaac is a heavyweight who doesn’t wrestle like one.

She runs her feet. She drops her knee to the mat on her shots. She hand-fights at a pace most heavyweights can’t stay with for six minutes. In the Wheeling University practice room, Isaac and one of her teammates joke that they should trade bodies, since the teammate wrestles like a heavyweight and Isaac wrestles like a lightweight.

“I’m explosive on my feet,” said Isaac. “I’ll hand-fight until I get what I want. If I try a move and don’t get it, just know I’ll try it again in the same match. If I want a knee-pull single or a blast double, I’m going to go get it. It’s not about being cocky. It’s about knowing wrestling.”

The resume backs it up. Isaac is a four-time Ohio state champion, a three-time Fargo national champion and the 2025 NAIA national champion at 207 pounds, a title she won as a freshman at Life University. Now, after a detour through Tiffin University that ended with a neck injury, she is the headliner for a Wheeling program that will wrestle its first NCAA season this winter.

Wheeling head women’s wrestling coach Lily Sherer saw the difference the first time she watched Isaac in the room.

“She’s a heavyweight, but she doesn’t wrestle like one,” said Sherer. “She, unlike others, hits her knee to the ground, runs around on her shots. She is super aggressive and fast. She is very agile and just has a very high pace, which other heavyweights don’t.”

Isaac started wrestling at age 3 after watching her older brother on the mat. Wrestling runs through the whole family. Her father wrestled, her brother wrestled and a lot of her cousins did as well.

“At 3 years old, nobody is going to be that successful,” said Isaac. “You can be good, but you’re going to lose matches. I was decent, I guess. Once I got into elementary school and then high school, that’s when things started coming together.”

Things came together quickly. After her eighth-grade year, Isaac placed third in Fargo without knowing what freestyle was going into the tournament. She would go on to win three Fargo titles.

At Whitmer High School in Toledo, Ohio, Isaac wrestled boys all the way through her senior year while also competing at the girls state tournament. Whitmer head coach Jeremy Fowler said she never lost a girls match in high school, finishing 84-0. Her school painted a mural of her outside the Whitmer Field House. Fowler summed her up simply when she won her fourth title in March 2024: “She’s competitive, she hates to lose.”

Isaac said the support around her took away any pressure.

“I felt all the love and support around me,” said Isaac. “Whether I won or lost, I still had people who cared about me and supported me behind the scenes through all the hard work and dedication it took to get where I am today.”

It wasn’t always easy. Isaac said she was bullied for wrestling when she was younger, and that is part of why she enjoys watching the sport grow.

“People used to ask me why I was in a male-dominated sport and call me a man,” said Isaac. “I got bullied for it. Now I love seeing little girls come into wrestling without having to deal with that, because people understand that it’s a sport for both men and women.”

Isaac committed to Life University on July 5, 2023. Other schools reached out, but she had already made up her mind.

“I chose Life University because I saw how the team came together, supported each other and how good the coaching staff was at the time,” said Isaac. “Other schools were reaching out, but I kind of disregarded them because I already knew where I wanted to go. I just didn’t want to make that known yet.”

She arrived in Marietta, Georgia, in the fall of 2024. The wrestling adjustment was minimal. Isaac said her high school practices, against boys, were the hardest she has ever had. The rest of it was tougher. She arrived at Life overweight, by her own description, and found the weight cutting wore down her love for the sport.

“When I got there, I didn’t have much love for the sport,” said Isaac. “I had to regain that love by doing what I do best: going out on the mat and wrestling.”

She found it again in a hurry. Isaac said she knew she could win a national title as soon as she stepped on the mat for her first college competition.

She won a title at the Soldier Salute in late December, defeating multiple All-Americans.

There were setbacks along the way during her freshman season. Isaac was shut out 9-0 by Grand View’s Olivia Brown at the NWCA National Duals in January.

“There was some doubt after the loss, but very little, because I knew what I was capable of,” said Isaac. “I was there for a reason, just like everyone else. Sometimes you’ve got to crush other people’s dreams to make yours come true.”

She lost by fall at the Mid-South Conference Championships to Indiana Tech’s Riley Dempewolf.

“It didn’t matter what happened at the previous tournament,” said Isaac. “What matters is what happens in March.”

In March, at the 2025 NAIA Women’s Wrestling National Championships in Park City, Kansas, the No. 3-seeded Isaac pinned her first two opponents, won a 7-0 decision in the semifinals and edged fourth-seeded Dempewolf 4-1 in the finals at 207 pounds. Her 24 team points helped Life U capture its first NAIA women’s team title with 190.5 points, 70 points ahead of runner-up Grand View.

When the final whistle blew, Isaac ran, looked into the crowd, threw her hands up and jumped into her coach’s arms.

“I was excited and, in a way, shocked because I was a freshman at the time,” said Isaac. “I knew winning was my end goal, and I had to accomplish it.”

Isaac left Life U after her freshman season. She declined to go into the reasons, other than to say the decision was hers and that Life U was a good program with good coaches. Sherer said that, to her knowledge, Isaac wanted to be closer to family.

Isaac transferred to Tiffin University in Ohio. She wrestled four matches for the Dragons and won all four. Then she landed awkwardly on her neck while wrestling and suffered a bulging disc. The injury kept her out of the postseason.

“I felt amazing before the injury,” said Isaac. “If I hadn’t gotten injured, I believe I would have been a returning national champion.”

The time away was hard, but Isaac said it made her think about her mental health and helped her grow up.

“It helped me become an adult,” said Isaac. “It helped me with life in different ways.”

The path to Wheeling started before Wheeling had a women’s wrestling coach.

Sherer was hired on Feb. 6 while she was an assistant at Pitt-Johnstown, with the condition that she would stay through the national tournament if the Mountain Cats had a qualifier. They did, and Makayla Paclib went on to become an All-American. While Sherer finished out the season, Wheeling men’s head coach Shane Brown recruited for her, leaning on his connections in Ohio. Brown had coached Jeremy Ginter, Isaac’s teammate at Whitmer, and that connection led to a visit once Sherer had moved to West Virginia.

“Coach Brown got me here,” said Isaac. “One of my buddies also went here, although he left. I wrestled with him in high school, and he’s like a brother to me.”

Sherer, a four-time national qualifier and All-American at Lock Haven, is 23 years old. She wrestled in Fargo at the same time Isaac did and knew exactly who she was recruiting.

“It was definitely intimidating at first because I’m not much older than her,” said Sherer. “I’m not much older than any of my girls. It’s been nothing but a pleasure so far.”

Sherer believes Isaac wanted more than a place to win another national title. She wanted a program she could help build.

“I wanted to help build a new program and help others,” said Isaac. “Coming here puts me at ease. I know what I’m doing, and I’m helping other people. I love helping others and making a difference, and I feel like that’s what I’m doing here. I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

The Cardinals have nine recruited wrestlers and two walk-ons, and every one of them is a transfer. Sherer said landing a national champion gave her a strong foundation and made it easier to sell other wrestlers on a small private Division II school. Several of Isaac’s new teammates are from Ohio, including longtime friend and three-time state champion Jaydyn McKinney, and most of them knew who she was before she arrived.

“These girls were excited to be in a room with someone of that level and have it elevate them as well, because the standard is pretty high,” said Sherer.

With only nine wrestlers in the room, keeping the energy up can be a challenge. Sherer said that is where Isaac makes her biggest difference. She leads by example, has gotten vocal a few times and keeps the room laughing. Sherer saw the same dynamic as a wrestler at Lock Haven when that program was getting started.

“She might be intimidating, but she’s full of laughter,” said Sherer. “She’s so funny. She makes everybody laugh. She really is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Isaac said the room has a way of picking itself up.

“If we’re all having a bad day, someone will come into the room with a bubbly attitude,” said Isaac. “Usually that’s me, but if I’m the one having a bad day, someone else brings that energy. All the girls get along, and they’re all great wrestlers. I can’t wait to see what we do together as a new program.”

Isaac said Sherer is willing to explain a move as many times as it takes, and she isn’t shy about telling Isaac when she’s getting heavy on her feet.

“She’s real with me, and I love that about her,” said Isaac.

The work this season is about polish, not a rebuild. Sherer said she isn’t trying to change the way Isaac wrestles. Interestingly, the tall girls aren’t the problem. Isaac is short and stocky and does well against them because she is in their face from the handshake. The focus is on opponents with a similar build who can match her pace.

When she does get to her offense, Isaac likes to run up the score. She said she enjoys winning by technical superiority because it shows what she knows, but she’ll also get a pin when she’d rather get the match over with.

Off the mat, Isaac describes herself as funny and bubbly, and says “it’s either you love me or you hate me.” Her favorite thing, she said, is putting a smile on someone’s face. She recently took up running after years of hating it, and she likes hiking and spending time with family and friends.

In the summer, she works at a group home as a direct support professional, helping residents with disabilities with their daily living needs.

“I love helping people with disabilities,” said Isaac.

Isaac has three years of eligibility remaining, and the expectation at Wheeling is clear.

“I think the goal for her is to win a national title, honestly,” said Sherer. “That’s the expectation. It would be incredible for the program if she were able to do that. I don’t really know if there’s anyone who’s going to be in her way.”

Isaac’s goal is bigger than one.

“My goal is to become a seven-time national champion,” said Isaac. “I won three in high school, one in college, and I want to win three more in college. That’s my goal.”