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. 

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.