Joziah Fry is the best college athlete in Rhode Island, and I’ll bet you have never heard of him.
He is a two-time All-America and a two-time national champion. He has lost once in three years. He doesn’t just beat his opponents, he dominates them.
But Joziah Fry does not perform before 12,000 cheering spectators at the Amica Mutual Pavilion in downtown Providence or 7,000 fans at the Ryan Center in Kingston. He excels in front of a few hundred fans in college gyms. He trains in the gym of a former girls high school.
Joziah Fry wrestles for Johnson & Wales University, “J-Woo” for short. This weekend at the AMP, he hopes to cap another undefeated season, collect his third All-America honor and lead the Wildcats to their first team title in the NCAA Division III National Wrestling Championships.
It’s a lot, Fry knows, but he embraces the challenge.
“I’m going to have my whole family there, and you’re just stupid if you think I’m losing in front of my family,” he exclaimed last week when we met for close to an hour.
“I’m having my whole family there. My whole Narragansett side. My whole Spanish side. Like, I’m going to show out 100%, and I’m going to, like, show a really dominant performance.”
That’s Joziah Fry. Confident to the point of cocky. Brash to the point of arrogant. Dominant to the point of invincible. All that in a 5-foot-4, 125-pound package.
Fry’s belief in himself is so strong that he even taunts his opponents on social media before their matches. He wants to rile them up so they will come after him with everything they have. It’s his way of motivating himself to train harder to meet that challenge.
“I’m always trying to be better than myself. I’m not really worried about my opponent,” he said.
This season he has trained harder than ever. Lifting. Running.
“It’s kind of like that burning fire in me. . . .This year I want to show everyone that I’m not like the best — I’m the greatest,” he said.
“He talks a lot of smack,”JWU coach Lonnie Morris told me. “He does it because then he has to back it up. If he chirps like that, he has to back it up.”
So far, Fry has backed it up. At Coventry High School he was runner-up at 106 pounds as a freshman in 2017 and Rhode Island state champion the next three years, twice at 106 and at 120 as a senior in 2020.
At J-Woo, Fry has been a major force at 125 pounds. In 2023 he was 43-0, NCAA champion and All-America. The New England Wrestling Association recognized him as its most dominant wrestler. In 2024 he was 36-1 and again NCAA champ at 125 and All-America. His only loss was to Luke Stanich of Division I Lehigh at the Princeton Open in the second event of the season,
This year, Fry is 38-0 at 125, the Northeast Regional champion and the strong favorite to three-peat as NCAA champion, which would be a J-Woo first.
Morris has coached 11 NCAA champions and five NEWA Hall of Famer at JWU. Is Joziah Fry his best ever? He considered the question carefully, paused and smiled.
“He is putting the work in. Probably no other athlete I’ve ever had is training on that level. That’s why he is successful. No one trains harder. He is the best we’re ever had. If he wins, he’ll have been to the finals three times and a champion three times,” he said.
Jay Albis, Hayden Brown and Michael DiNardo are two-time national champs. Brown also has a chance to win his third this weekend.
Fry started his athletic odyssey as a pee wee football player for Warwick PAL.
“I was always rough, like wrestling and stuff like that,” he said with a grin.
A teammate suggested he try judo. He did and loved it.
“It’s all about big throws, and once you go to the mat it’s choking and arm barring. I did judo for my first year and I was, like, ‘This is cool,’” he said. He started wrestling to improve his judo and continued through middle school.
He did both his first two years at Coventry High and then decided to focus on wrestling. There was no judo future for him in college.
“I started dialing into wrestling and really improving,” he said. “Having that judo background made my wrestling so much better than if I didn’t.”
Two years and numerous trophies and ribbons later, Fry was a prized recruit. He opted for Campbell University in North Carolina and its highly regarded Division I program. It was a mistake, thanks largely to COVID-19.
Fry recalled that classes were online, wrestling practice was in small groups, and wrestlers had to wear masks.
Academics and being away from home for the first time, unsupervised, were major challenges. Plus, Fry has ADHD, which means concentrating is difficult. He partied more than he studied and lasted only three semesters, wrestling one semester after redshirting his freshman year.
Fry returned home and welcomed the support of his parents and six siblings. He pondered his future, wondering if he should quit wrestling and go to work.
A meeting at Buffalo Wild Wings in Warwick changed his life. Former JWU wrestlers Everett Desilets and Juwan Vicente, coach Lonnie “Moose” Morris and his dad convinced Joziah to try again. Brian Fry told his son that he was the first in his family to go to college, and he had to finish.
Joz, as he is known around campus, transferred to JWU. At first, the transition was difficult. His high school friends were working and making money. He was living at home and going to school. By second semester, though, everything clicked. He started hanging out with the wrestling team and “got into the J-Woo atmosphere.” His grades and his lifestyle improved. “I was starting to get back on the right track,” he said.
This weekend, winning a national championship with his teammates is driving Joziah Fry. He fell short in high school, never winning a team title. He is ready to do it in his last tournament in college, his family, friends and fellow students on hand to cheer the J-Woo wrestling warriors.
Fry’s face just lights up when he thinks of the possibility.
“We’re all so locked in right now,” he said. “We know no one can beat us.”
This story was reported by The Public’s Radio.
