Lill Goes to the Mat with Strategy and Comes Up All-American

To cap off a highly successful 38–10 freshman campaign, Landon Lill went 6-2 at the National Prep Wrestling Championships at 138 pounds, finishing seventh overall and earning All-American status. He’s Peddie’s first freshman to do so since 2007, and its first All-American since 2019. Lill was one of nine freshmen out of 112 total participants in the tournament to place. As a team, the Falcons sent nine wrestlers to the highly coveted event at Lehigh University.

And Lill is just getting started.

“He had a great freshman year, but there’s still so much room left for him to grow and so much untapped potential in him. He’s just going to keep getting better and better, because that’s the way he approaches the sport,” said Head Coach Austin Frank. “His mat IQ is one of his biggest assets. He’s very aware of what’s happening around him on the mat, and he makes decisions in the middle of his matches that put him in the best position to have a positive outcome in that match. He already had that skillset when he came to us.”

At National Preps, Lill was one of 11 wrestlers who wrestled back to the podium without making it to quarterfinals, and the only freshman to do so. It was a gritty performance that included a fall and tech fall, earning the team bonus points, and a 30-second ride out of his opponent in the blood round.

“You couldn’t draw out any more adversity than that for a freshman,” Frank said. “Landon has this quiet confidence to him that shows up in a lot of ways, and in that moment, it ended up being the difference for him. I thought, ‘We’re good, he’s going to ride this kid out for 30 seconds because he’s done it a bunch, and I know he can.’ That’s what he did, and it was a really cool moment. In that short 30 seconds, his toughness, grit and confidence were highlighted.”

Lill credits putting in extra hours in the morning and getting his diet right as the two biggest factors to his freshman-year success. According to his nutritional stats, he’s put on six pounds of muscle over the past two months.

Lill said he had to overcome some big challenges at the beginning of the season, especially going into big matches. But by the end, his confidence was at a high, and he was able to hit a good stride going into National Preps.

“To be a master of something, you have to do it for 10,000 hours,” said teammate Ryan Horner ’28. “As the season went on, Lill kept getting closer to that goal and kept progressing. It’s easy to beat the kids that you know you’re going to beat, but it takes something else to beat the kids who are great, too, in those tight matches.”

Along the way, Lill competed in the U17 Pan-Am Greco and Freestyle Team Trials, then went to Iowa for the 2026 USA 16U Folkstyle National Championship, where he secured fifth place. He wrestled all the way to the semifinals, then dropped down and picked up a win the next day in the fifth- and sixth-place match, defeating the same opponent he had lost to the year before at the same event. Miles away from New Jersey, he found some familiar faces.

“I was really grateful to have some other prep school kids there,” he said. “Blair wrestlers helped me get a warm-up in, which was nice.”

Amongst his many season accolades, Lill placed second in the NHSCA Nationals in the freshman division in March. He racked up five wins, including two tech falls and a fall, before losing 2–1 in overtime in the finals and earned NHSCA All-American status there as well.

Lill’s success can be chalked up to his time on the mat and the work he’s put in over the offseason. But it’s also a result of the program the Falcons have been building and the legacy of the program and the team, Frank explained.

“There’s no individual success without the team’s success,” he said. “Everyone comes in working every day, pushing each other, holding each other accountable. Everybody in that room, top to bottom, contributes to the culture we’ve built, which is a culture of accountability, a culture of success and a culture of ‘Let’s put ourselves in the best position possible to support each other.’”