Eric Knopsnyder | Jax Forrest brings positive attention to Johnstown
CLEVELAND – The folks at Visit Johns town should be thrilled with the coverage of the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships. The number of times Johnstown was mentioned on ESPN, on websites and in newspapers over the past week is almost incalculable. That’s because Jax Forrest was the talk of the tournament, and he won the main event on the nationally televised broadcast of American wrestling’s biggest spectacle.
Forrest, who began the season wrestling for Bishop McCort Catholic and ended it the NCAA champion at 133 pounds, beat Ohio State’s Ben Davino 5-2 in ESPN’s highlight match of the night. It’s ironic that Forrest has brought so much positive attention to Johnstown and the surrounding area considering so many in the region are still reluctant to claim him. Forrest was in seventh grade when his family moved to Johnstown, and some still hold that against him, even though he waited a year to compete for Bishop McCort and missed the postseason his freshman year because of PIAA sanctions against the Crimson Crushers program.
It was worth it for Forrest, who quickly progressed from one of the South’s top wrestlers to one of the world’s best. “My mindset completely changed, moving from North Carolina to Pennsylvania,” he said. In Johnstown, he practiced daily with the Crimson Crushers’ Bo Bassett and Melvin Miller – the top recruits for the class of 2026 and 2027, respectively, who are headed to Virginia Tech – as well as other Division I recruits such as Sam Herring (Penn State), Mason Gibson and Devin Magro (both Rutgers) and Owen McMullen (Virginia Tech).
“We had so many guys that I’d wrestle with every day,” Forrest said. “That just changed my mindset. I wanted to go score points.
In North Carolina, I was a little more relaxed. It changed everything with my wrestling. ” Forrest won a silver medal at the U17 World Championships in Rome in 2022 and followed that up with PIAA titles in 2024 and 2025.