Transitioning to Freestyle (Jim Andrassy)

After the NCAA Tournament, we went right into freestyle mode.  We had practices on Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning for three weeks.  Coach Musser is the most experienced at it and he ran most of the workouts.  Although collegiate and freestyle are different in a lot of ways, they are starting to look more alike because of some recent rule changes.  So there’s a lot of teaching the basics and teaching how to adjust to rule changes.  As soon as the three weeks are over, we go into (Golden Pride) club practices, which we started a couple weeks ago.

Along with our own guys, we have guys from other colleges and kids from area high schools.  Anyone from within 50 miles can join.  It’s a much different environment from our regular season practices.  Not many of our guys wrestled freestyle in high school so we really have to get to the core of how things work in freestyle and how to be successful.  Of the incoming freshmen, Anthony Tutolo has joined the club and I think a few more will join once school is done for them.  The club goes until August and we’ll go back collegiate style at some point during the summer.

University Nationals is the largest freestyle event around.  There’s 800-900 kids at this tournament and we’re fortunate that it’s right next to us in Akron May 23-25.  Two years ago, Dustin Kilgore and Ian Miller each won it.  Last year, Ian took fourth at a higher weight class, but he’ll back down at 154 this year and we’re expecting really big things from him.  He’s a really talented freestyle wrestler.  It’s about athletic ability and explosion and that’s all the things Ian has.  If he wins, there’s a lot of events we can send him to and he can work out at the Olympic Training Center.

I think Sam Wheeler can do really well at University Nationals because he’s pretty explosive.  Cole Baxter just started freestyle last year.  Now that he’s getting the gist of it, I think he could do really well.  Caleb Marsh is another guy that could do well just because of his style.  Mike DePalma is a very good freestyle wrestler, but he’s still recovering from an injury.  The weight classes are all different than college weights so it gets tricky for some guys.

For the future we’re talking about hosting a University Dual Meet Championship around this time of year as we continue to grow as a sport.