Sherrill: Reflections on a memorable 25-plus-year tenure

Photo: Rob Sherrill was inducted into the Illinois chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2024.

Editor’s Note: This article, Rob Sherrill’s final column for WIN Magazine, printed in WIN’s Fargo Commemorative Issue, which printed on July 31, 2026. 

By Rob Sherrill

Another U.S. Marine Corps Junior Nationals is in the books. Man, those annual pilgrimages to Fargo were fun back in the early days. Today, I’m enjoying observing America’s biggest wrestling event from a little over 1,000 miles away. But even without having any mat casts up on the computer in front of me, as I often do, I could look at any of the matchups on any bracket and visualize each match, almost move by move.

That’s the product of years of watching wrestlers that love the world’s greatest sport put it on the line every time they step on a mat. You know what’s coming … or so you think.

The newest rankings, the final set to be produced for the 2025-26 season, take what happened over eight memorable days at Fargo, adding plenty of other results from events as far back as March, into the almighty algorithm that helps determine our final top 25 at each of the 14 high school weight classes.

Enjoy them. They will be the final set of rankings that I produce for the best wrestling publication on the market today: WIN Magazine.

I’ve loved every moment being WIN’s national high school editor, a tenure that goes back so many years that I’m not fully certain when it started. This journey began about a quarter century ago, give or take a season.

When Tristan Warner, who is doing a fabulous job as WIN’s editor, asked me to write a final column, I took it as a compliment … and also as a challenge. It’s never easy to write about oneself, especially someone who has put so much energy into chronicling the accomplishments of America’s top scholastic wrestlers.

After all, I was never the story. All of them were. I still feel great pride, though, when I watch college wrestling broadcasts, knowing that every wrestler I watched passed through my office during their high school days. Some quickly fulfilled the promise they showed as preps at the next level, while others are still on that long, grueling journey in search of their goals. The connection I feel to each of them as a result of my work fills me with great satisfaction and makes the uncountable hours worthwhile.

It was a joy to work over 20 years with Mike Finn as my editor. Together, we came up with so many great ideas for stories and bounced ideas off each other constantly. Between Mike and WIN Publisher Bryan Van Kley, no doubt ever existed about how important high school coverage was to the magazine, an emphasis that remains in place today. The friendship, leadership and counsel of Mike, Bryan and Tristan is what have made these years so special and so rewarding.

When Mike announced that he was retiring as editor, almost two years ago, the news initially hit me like a ton of bricks. Losing regular contact with someone who had been a boss, mentor and colleague over the course of two-plus decades was something I knew wouldn’t be easy. Inevitably, I started contemplating my own future, just as Mike had done with his.

That self-assessment brought into focus where I stand in this age of wrestling journalism. My style developed when I entered the newspaper business in the late 1970s. Yes, many of you reading this column weren’t yet a twinkle in your parents’ eyes back then.

When I started doing first local, then state, then national rankings, the internet hadn’t been developed. Today, it’s how we do business and I’m proud to say I’ve developed as many web-surfing hacks to mine the information I really need as anyone I know.

That said, how I handle the high school beat now is probably the way I handled it 15 years ago and is probably the way I would handle it five years from now. You likely won’t see me doing podcasts or building large social media followings, like the folks making a living covering wrestling today are doing. That’s not how I’m wired.

No matter how great it looks like things are going from the outside, no matter how much I hope you’ve enjoyed and appreciated the content I’ve contributed, every beat needs a succession plan. Bryan and Tristan are the right people to take the magazine into the future. WIN is in good hands. It will continue to innovate. I’m convinced of it.

I’m not leaving entirely. I’ll continue to be an advisor to the magazine and perhaps work on a special project or two. The Illinois state rankings, which I spend many hours on each season for the Illinois Wrestling Coaches and Officials Association, will continue to be an effort that gives me great satisfaction and I look forward to continuing that partnership.

Henry Marsh once said: “It is often said that it is better to leave too early than too late, whether it is your professional career, a party, or life itself.” Fortunately, neither of the latter two are in play. But in the case of career decisions, it’s preferable to leave your readers wanting more of what you have to offer, rather than less.

That’s where I stand today. I hope all of you consider it a race well run.