Three Minutemen Reunite at Drexel Driven by Coach Eric Ring’s Culture

There is an undeniable energy that flows through a wrestling room when something genuine is being built. It’s not something you can buy, and you certainly can’t fake it. It's created brick by brick, practice by practice, through sweat, consistency, and an uncompromising set of expectations.

If you take a drive up Route 42 from Sewell towards Philadelphia, cross the Walt Whitman Bridge, and weave through the streets of University City, you’ll find a direct line connecting Washington Township High School to Drexel University. It's about a thirty-minute drive, but for Ethan Wilson, Dom Petracci, and Cole Hagerty, the journey represents a lifetime of shared mats, endless weight cuts, and a mentorship that transformed raw local talent into Division 1 college athletes.

At the heart of this pipeline is Eric Ring.

To understand the culture currently thriving at Washington Township, you have to look at the man holding the clipboard. Eric Ring is Washington Township wrestling personified. Long before he was guiding young men from the corner of the mat, Ring was carving out his own legacy as a Minuteman. A 2001 graduate of WTHS, Ring compiled a staggering 107-15 career record at 160 pounds, serving as team captain for three seasons. He dominated District 30 as a three-time champion, claimed two Region 8 titles, and reached the NJSIAA state podium twice, finishing fourth in 2000 and third in 2001.

His relentless style on the mat carried him straight to national powerhouse Edinboro University. As a Fighting Scot, Ring earned four varsity letters, captured the 2006 Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference championship, finished as a two-time Eastern Wrestling League runner-up, and qualified twice for the NCAA Division I National Championships, reaching the top 16 in the country in 2006.

When his competitive career concluded, Ring immediately turned toward coaching, getting his start as a graduate assistant at Drexel, a fateful stop that foreshadowed the bridge he would later build. Returning home to Sewell, he served as an assistant at WTHS from 2012 to 2016, earning District 30 and Region 8 Assistant Coach of the Year honors in 2016. Taking over as head coach in 2017, Ring transformed the program into a perennial contender, earning three District 30 Coach of the Year awards and induction into the South Jersey Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2018.

Yet for Ring, individual accolades were never the endgame. The goal was always to establish a lasting community standard, one that would mold boys into men capable of succeeding at the highest levels of life and sport.

Talk to anyone who has stepped onto the mats in Township under Coach Ring, and two phrases will immediately surface: "Meet the Standard" and "Nobody Cares. Work Harder."

They’re not catchy slogans painted on a locker room wall for photo ops. They are the operational code of the program.

Senior Ethan Wilson knows this better than almost anyone. Wilson, a finance major competing at 184 pounds for Drexel, has been under Ring’s wing since he was six years old. A three-time district champion, three-time first-team All-Olympic Conference selection, team MVP, and three-time NJSIAA state qualifier who also spent two seasons on the lacrosse field, Wilson’s athletic blueprint was forged entirely in the Township wrestling room.

For Wilson, the technical instruction was secondary to the life philosophy Ring shared over more than a decade.

"The biggest thing I can say about Coach Ring is there is something special going on in that wrestling room," Wilson shared. "Coach Ring taught me how to be a man on and off the mat. He always preached to lead by example and 'Meet the Standard,' which he set a high bar for. This mindset carried over not just on the mat, but in every area of life and school. He really taught me how to compete with myself and work harder than others to make myself successful."

That environment reshaped Wilson’s entire athletic trajectory. "Coach Ring’s mindset towards everything just makes me want to be the best version of myself," Wilson added. "I really believe you are a product of who you surround yourself with, and someone you can say that has rubbed off a lot on me is Coach Ring. He is the reason why I wanted to go Division 1 and had goals past just high school wrestling."

Sitting right alongside Wilson in the Drexel room is senior 197-pounder Dom Petracci. A Business Legal Studies major, Petracci was a cornerstone of Township’s lineup, serving as team captain for two seasons, starting all four years, winning a district title, taking a regional championship, placing third at Escape the Rock, and securing a fourth-place finish at the NJSIAA state tournament in 2022. An all-around athlete who also brought grit to the football field as a defensive end and quarterback, Petracci graduated with honors as an All-Olympic Conference selection and awarded scholar-athlete.

For Petracci, Coach Ring’s mentorship was defined by brutal honesty and unconditional accountability.

"One quote that I would say stuck with me the most from Coach Ring was 'Nobody cares. Work Harder,'" Petracci recalled. "Realizing at the age I am now, all these sayings stuck with me and were more of a lifestyle and growth lesson rather than a wrestling lesson. He preached that if you want something, you must put the work in and you gotta want to do it for yourself. No one else is gonna do it for you.”

Ring is known for pushing his wrestlers directly to their physical and mental limits, teaching them not just to hit "the wall," but to run straight through it.

"Another thing Coach Ring was known for was pushing us to our limits and breaking down 'the wall'...not only breaking it down, but running through it," Petracci explained. "With grit and determination, you can make it anywhere in life. You need to have a strong sense of standard and live up to them, and hold the ones around you to those standards as well. Another saying he always preached was 'Meet the Standard.' We all knew what it meant and knew what we had to change when he stated it. We needed to get tougher, work harder, and stop feeling sorry for ourselves, because at the end of the day, life will not feel sorry for you. Coach Ring was more than a coach. He was a mentor, a leader, and someone everyone should want to look up to."

The bond between these athletes runs deep into their childhoods. Petracci and Wilson have been wrestling together since they were four years old, traveling to youth tournaments across the region long before they ever imagined sharing a college room 30 minutes from home.

"This college experience is a dream come true, being able to travel to college that is 30 minutes away from my hometown and wrestle with a friend that I have known since being 4 years old, and also have a younger friend who is now just coming into college," Petracci reflected. "This shows that Eric Ring is building a foundation and something special at Township."

Now, that brotherhood has expanded to welcome incoming freshman Cole Hagerty. Competing at 133 pounds while majoring in Accounting, Hagerty represents the newest wave of Minuteman talent arriving in University City. Hagerty built an extraordinary high school resume at Washington Township, placing three times at the NJSIAA state tournament, earning first-team all-conference honors, and being named the Tri-County Student-Athlete of the Year.

"Being a former Minuteman and having kids I’ve grown up with at Drexel is something I would have never imagined," Wilson said. "I wrestled with Dom Petracci since I was 4, and we would always travel to tournaments as kids. Even though Cole was younger, I always knew him since he was one of the better young kids, so I’d talk with him a good amount even though we were never on a team together. Us all now being at Drexel just shows the leadership Coach Ring has and what we look for now in college."

For Hagerty, stepping into the Division 1 ranks is the culmination of years of hands-on coaching and belief.

"Coach Ring played a big part in my dream of wrestling at the D1 level," Hagerty said. "He pushed me to my limit every day and made me want to put in the work. He invested so much in me and the Washington Township wrestling team, and we got better every day because of it. I have nothing but respect for what he's done for me as a wrestler and as a person."

For Coach Ring, seeing three of his pupils wearing the blue and gold of Drexel University is a point of profound pride.

"Having three Washington Township kids wrestling D1 at Drexel and getting to be college teammates is pretty special," Ring said. "I’ve coached Ethan, Dom, and Cole for a long time, and to see them get the chance to compete at the highest level and get a great education at the same time is unbelievable. I am so happy for them all."

At Drexel, hard work and continuous growth remain the core principles of the room, the exact same two characteristics Ring drilled into his athletes from the moment they first stepped onto the mats in Sewell.

What is happening between Washington Township and Drexel University is more than just a convenient commute up the highway. It is proof that when a coach sets a standard and young men commit to living up to it, the impact reaches far beyond high school podiums. It creates a lasting culture of success that carries local kids straight to the national stage.