Matt Hill Looks Back at Northern Illinois/Northern Iowa Trip

This past weekend we ventured to the far Midwest to battle Huskies of Northern Illinois University on Saturday and the Panthers of Northern Iowa on Sunday.  The total time in the bus was about 24 hours. We left Friday Feb. 7, at 11a.m. and got home Monday morning at 4am.

Bus Movies:

The first thing I want to share with you is the movie selection for the 24 hour bus adventure.  Coach Andrassy decided rent some modern classics.  On our way to NIU we started off with one of my favorites The Shawshank Redemention, followed by The Gladiator, which ate up about 5.5 hours of the long bus ride. We had about 40 minutes left in the trip so we I snuck in a movie from my own collection “300”  (a great bus movie). After the Northern Illinois Dual on Saturday we hit the road and finished the rest of “300” and watched Rain Man. For our 12-hour ride home from UNI we watched Good Will Hunting, Forrest Gump and I think the Usual Suspects. We shut down the movies at 11pm…And as coach Moore would say: “It’s Sleepy Sleepy time.”

Northern Illinois Thoughts:

To sum up our performance at NIU I would say we wrestled very flat. Our intensity and sense of urgency to score was simply not there.  We waited around to score points, relaxed on bottom, hung on in the top position and gave up two pins.  We ended up winning 6-of-10 matches and won by criteria.  In my opinion our guys were upset and completely unsatisfied with their performances at NIU.  The great thing about wrestling is that it’s a very honest sport.  Recognizing what you need to change is essential to be successful.  Even though we won, our guys licked their wounds against a tough scrappy NIU team and prepared to face a very, very good Northern Iowa (Ranked 5^th) team the next day.

Northern Iowa Thoughts:

 First, I want to say, “what a great place to wrestle”. The West Gym is entirely dedicated to wrestling and wrestling only.  It’s very vintage and the walls are covered in wrestling history.  The fans were hardcore wrestling people and truly love their home team.  They were brutal hecklers but respected our competitive efforts on the mat. 

Our overall our energy and determination was completely different from the previous day.   The guys showed passion and welcomed the challenges they faced in the West Gym at UNI.  At heavyweight, Mimmo Lytle showed some grit riding his opponent out most of the third period to get the riding time point advantage, capturing the win.  Cole Baxter at 197 lbs fought hard to get a major decision adding 4 team points instead of 3.  Mike DePalma (149) flipped a switch in his head in the second period and score 15 points worth of near fall to get a tech-fall.  Senior TJ Keklak (157) secured a victory against a favored opponent and Tyler Small fought back from a two point early deficit to win 7-2.  Even the guys who lost showed extreme effort and battled every second in each match. 

As a team we showed pride in our wrestling.  We always preach to our guys that every point earned or given up in a match is very crucial as a team.  We end up in an 18-18 tie but lost by criteria 19-18.  We had to go far down the criteria list to find who the winner was. It came down to total points scored during the match. (UNI-59 and KSU-58)  Looking back as coach I can pick out many different things that happened during that match that eventually could have affected the total points scored.  But that’s a waste of time.  We lost to a tough opponent and need to focus on our next one.  Getting better every day is the key to winning in this sport. It’s about learning from our failures and using that painful feeling to fuel our next challenge.   I was proud of our guys overall and I look forward to seeing them compete this coming weekend at the NWCA National Duals in Columbus.

Interesting things about the weekend:

·        -  Both Dual meets ended up in a tie.  The score for each dual meet was 18-18 before criteria

·         - Both teams names start with Northern

·         - The Northern Iowa match came down to the second to last criteria (total match points.) The interesting thing is very last criteria is the first takedown of the match to decide the winner, which was by Mack McGuire at 133lbs who took down the #1 guy in the country Joe Colon in the 1^st period.