The 2013-14 Wrestling Schedule

At the beginning of the year we used to just go to the Hokie Open & the Eastern Michigan Open, but we’re kind of getting away from that.  People want more dual meets.  We’ll probably take 20 guys…weigh 15 in for the duals….the other guys will wrestle in an open tournament.  Our  unattached guys will also go there on their own and compete at these events. It’s something new that Derek DelPorto from Eastern Michigan came up with.  And you can actually have guys wrestle in both events.  It’s a good opportunity for guys to not only get a lot matches in for that experience, but also to give them dual meet experience.

It’s a great home year for us. We have seven matches on six different dates.  We’re going to do Beauty and the Beast again and this time wrestling and gymnastics will both compete against North Carolina State.  At the end of the dual season we get Missouri on Feb. 21 and our goal is to go into that match and wrestle for a MAC Championship.  Central Michigan on Jan. 26 is a huge match for us that will determine where we’re at in the conference.

We’re going back to the Southern Scuffle where we can take 15 guys over winter break and get them a lot of good experience there.  The Scuffle’s a little easier on us travel wise than going out to Las Vegas.

The NWCA duals is a two-day event this year over President’s Day…A Sunday and Monday. They’re still working out some of the details, but we’ll have to turn right around and wrestle Missouri and Edinboro four days later.  That Sunday and Monday is a down time for basketball so we’re hoping to get some exposure on that.

It’s exciting to have nine teams here for the MAC Championships.  We don’t get to host this kind of event often.  With the Ohio high school state tournament being the week prior, we hope to have a lot of wrestling fans from around the state so we’re hoping to get over 2,000 people in the stands for our conference tournament.

2013-14 Schedule

Olympic Games Keeping Wrestling

The recent decision of Olympic wrestling staying through 2024 ultimately helps college wrestling and has given us some publicity over the last year.  It has helped wrestling people at all levels from many nations come together.  Hopefully this momentum continues to go in the right direction as our governing bodies develop 5-10 year plans.  

It could have changed the way people look at us had it been cut.  A lot of the smaller college programs could have been affected.  But, it made us realize that we need to be different about how we’re marketing our sport.  We’ve been considered a blue-collar sport and some of these white collar sports have done a better job of marketing themselves at the international level.

For a guy like Dustin (Kilgore), it gives him a chance to not only be a world champ every year, but an Olympic champ every four years and keep his dream alive.  He now gets a few shots to make those Olympic teams.  He’s in a pretty good position right now. Dustin just needs to keep doing what he’s doing and learning as much as he can.

For guys like Ian Miller, it gives them an opportunity when college is over if they want to pursue a wrestling career, that option is there.

Plain Dealer: Wrestling's Olympic victory benefits Ohio's deep talent pool

Wrestling Begins Preseason Training

By Head Coach Jim Andrassy

We always have our first day of conditioning on the first day of classes.  Our goal is to get these guys in here and see what they’ve done over the last month to stay in shape.  We’ll use this next month-and-a-half to really get our guys in shape so when practice starts they’re ready to go.  So we push them as hard as we can. 

We also have a big roster now of about 36 guys so it gives us a chance to see who can handle the work load we give them.  We work out four days a week.  We lift weights with strength & conditioning coach Bob Lemieux for 45 minutes then we have an hour and 15 minute conditioning period.  One day we may run four miles around campus, another day we’ll be in the wrestling room, one day we’re in the Field House, one day we ran up and down the hill on campus.  We try to burn as much fat off the guys as we can to get them down to the lean weight that they’ll be wrestling.  Some days are more running based and others are strength based.  In the Field House we have them carrying 35-pound plates and bags around.  And that really helps with their strength.

When we recruit kids, we explain to them the first five to six weeks is probably the hardest part of our season.  The majority of our freshmen were pretty well prepared, knowing what we were going to do and came in pretty good shape.  Once we get into the season it’s more about learning and repetition.  I can already tell that some of these freshmen are really going to push our older guys in the room.  It’s a group that’s ultimately going to make this program better.

Within the first week you can tell what kind of shape guys are in. A guy like Ian Miller…he’s probably in the best shape he’s ever been in.  He’s strong and conditioning wise, he’s winning a lot of the races which he’d never done before.  We’re really happy where he’s at.  A guy like Cole Baxter who was injured most of last season is a little bit behind because he had a knee injury and wasn’t able to do things for almost three months.

Our first official practice is Oct. 17.  From Oct. 5-12, we really test them mentally and physically and push them almost to the point of breaking.  Then they’ll have a light five days to recover before practice.  Once we start coaching and teaching, we want them to be able to stay in a good stance an hour-and-a-half into practice.  If you get tired in a practice, your legs start to straighten up and you start to bend your back, which creates horrible habits.  But if you’re in great shape, you should be able to stay in a good stance, keep your knees bent and do the little things right throughout the entire practice.  In the middle of a run right now, we’ll stop and get into a stance and start a wrestling motion just so their bodies start to get used to it.