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.   

Taking Momentum into Home Duals Against Old Dominion and Ohio State (Jim Andrassy)

Looking back at Buffalo I thought we did a good job of wrestling through situations. We got into scrambles and continued working through them. And in the past we’ve had some problems doing that.  Tyler Small and Mike DePalma’s falls were both from scrambles and they just continued to correct their position over and over until they got the fall. 

 

We also got another fall from Ian Miller who’s going to pin a lot of guys just with how strong he is.  He’s our new Dustin Kilgore for the next few years.  Caleb Marsh is another one that’s so strong he’s able to work through moves on top and that’s how he got his front head slide-by to work so well against Buffalo.  I feel like all 10 starters in the lineup really controlled the pace of the whole match, even at 125.

Part of Alfredo Gray’s issue has been finishing matches which we have to continue working on.  Fredo and Del Vinas are going to wrestle off this week and we’re going to go with whoever wins the wrestle-off at 125.  

We have a young team and I think the first three weeks were really good for us.  I don’t know that we were as successful as we wanted to be, but we learned a lot from those three weeks. Going into Old Dominion and Ohio State I think we’re looking to surprise more people.  I think we can beat a lot of good teams.  We just need to be consistent and make sure we’re doing the right things.

This will be the first time we face Old Dominion in a conference match.  It should be a real exciting one.  They’re ranked ahead of us in some weight classes, but personally I think we match up well with them.  It’s probably going to be close and could come down to who scores more bonus points.  I think we’ve got five or six really good guys and we’re going to have to get other guys step up which I think they’ll continue to do.

Cole Baxter’s one of those guys that I think can be really good for us.  He’s beaten four ranked guys so far.  He’s got some bad losses, but he’s got some good wins.  Now he’s got to keep improving on that so at the end of the year his record is good enough to go along with those good wins to get to the national tournament.

We’ve also got a lot of smart kids on our team.  And it makes our jobs a lot easier when you’ve got smart kids.  With lifestyle, schoolwork and wrestling…if one’s going well, the other two are usually going well too.

Having Old Dominion in the MAC expands our conference to the South.  They’ve got a really strong lineup that’s built a lot like us.  Top to bottom they have no weak spots.

And right now the MAC might be the second best conference in the country behind the Big Ten.  As recruits start to realize how good our conference is they may start to see that they get 50% scholarship at a Big Ten school and get 65% in the MAC and end up doing that.  Hopefully we’ll start to see more of that with this new look to the conference.

We’re expecting a great crowd for Ohio State.  I’m glad they’re committing themselves to coming here so we can go back-and-forth every year.  Because of all the wrestling fans in Northeast Ohio, we get a better crowd here than when we go there.  We’re hoping to beat Old Dominion and have a five-match winning streak going into it.

We’re 100% healthy now and this is usually the time of year we start to wrestle our best.  Because of the type of kids we have, we have some struggles at the beginning of the year.  The type of guys we bring in sometimes just need more development.  It’s our last match before we send them home for Christmas so hopefully our guys will up for it ready to go.

We’re also excited to bring in two local high schools Monday with Stow vs. Cuyahoga Falls.  And Thursday an Aurora junior high club team will wrestle a Columbus junior high club team.

The Transition from High School to College Wrestling (Tommy Zeigler)

Everyone talks about the huge jump from high school to college wrestling. Over the past couple months I’ve learned the reason for that.  I’ve had to improve my personal organization, and develop a strong mental attitude.  I constantly find myself telling people who ask me about my transition two things… One being, “I never knew how much I was capable of.” The second being, “I used to think I worked really hard. Now I know what that means.”  Something that has helped me a lot has been a desire to be seen as a mentally strong individual.  However, you don’t become mentally strong when everything is going great. You become mentally strong when times are hard which is why I am able to pride myself on the fact that the whole experience is making me mentally stronger than I ever could have been without it. 

Hard Work is the Most Important Component of Success (T.J. Keklak)

           

“The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.” This famous quote from Vince Lombardi has become the motto for my fifth and final season here at Kent State. I have learned over my first four years at Kent State that hard work is the most important component of success.

Our coaching staff does an incredible job at making each and every one of us believe and buy into that mindset, that the harder you work the harder it is to lose. Day in and day out they encourage us and motivate us to push our bodies and mentally challenge ourselves to prepare for the long season ahead. A combination of concentrated technique and intense live wrestling help us stay sharp in our wrestling skills, while allowing us to try different moves against our teammates in a match situation. We work extremely hard each and every day, which will pay dividends as we prepare for MAC duals, the MAC tournament and ultimately the NCAA Championships.

            Over the summer I rededicated myself to the sport that I love and made a promise to myself that I would do whatever it takes to make my last wrestling season the best one yet. That started with the commitment to drop a weight class from last year and compete at the 149 pound weight class. I have made great changes in my lifestyle and diet that have already made a drastic difference in how I feel in my conditioning and my training. I realized that in order to reach my goals as an individual I needed to make sacrifices and become more disciplined not only as a wrestler but as a person. In order to be successful I have been training harder than ever before, because like Vince Lombardi said many years ago, “The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.”