Peyton Omania against Michigan's Kanen Storr (Photo/Sam Janicki, SJanickiPhoto.com)Peyton Omania and I are talking about Greco-Roman wrestling, and I'm in full ramble mode, trying to get my ideas out mid-interview to articulate the story I want to write. Omania, a wrestler at Michigan State, is a good sport and listens.
I don't know if I'm phrasing this properly, I preface during our 15-minute phone call, but you guys have a room full of guys that aren't scared to wrestle Greco, and …
Omania interjects.
"That is the right way to phrase it," he says.
Interesting.
Okay, why is that the right way to phrase it?
"A lot of people are uncomfortable wrestling up top," Omania says. "They just don't really like it. They grow up wrestling folkstyle and freestyle. That's what they grow up idolizing.
"But I grew up in California and I had a bunch of Greco hammers that I wanted to be like - Robby Smith, Lucas Sheridan, Nikko Triggas, those kinds of guys."
Omania will begin his second redshirt freshman season (shoutout COVID-19) at Michigan State in a few months. This weekend, he's competing at the Senior world team trials in Nebraska. He is the only Spartan wrestler wrestling Greco this weekend.
But Omania and I are talking about the Michigan State room - specifically, the unique Greco influence in the Michigan State room. There's a lot of wrestlers with outstanding Greco credentials on the Spartans' roster.
There's Omania, a 2019 Junior Greco world bronze medalist, a two-time U23 Greco national champ, and, last April, a top-8 finisher at the U.S. Olympic Trials.
There's Cam Caffey, a 2019 Junior Greco world-teamer and U23 Greco national champ.
There's Jaden Enriquez, a 2017 Junior Greco national champ and, more recently, a U23 Greco world team trials runner-up.
There's more, too: Jordan Hamdan won a Cadet Greco national title and recently took third at the Senior Greco national championships; Matt Santos and Jackson Renicker were both U23 Greco All-Americans; Andrew Chambal made the 2016 Cadet Greco world team; Rayvon Foley won a Junior Greco national title in 2017.
There aren't many other Division I wrestling rooms with that much concentrated Greco talent.
"It kind of came organically," Michigan State coach Roger Chandler says. "It's not that we're looking for Greco-only guys. That's not the case at all. The connections just worked, and we thought these guys would be a great addition to our program."
Chandler will begin his sixth season as the Spartans' head coach when the' 21-22 season begins. He says a lot of this Greco stuff started when he hired Chris Williams in 2016. Williams has a strong Greco résumé, a 1998 FILA Junior national champ and a 2001 University national champ. He was also an NCAA All-American for the Spartans in 2001, winning five wrestleback matches to make the podium after a first-round loss.
"We told our guys, if we're going to go to the Junior and U23 tournaments, we're going to get as much mat time as we can get," Chandler says. "So we push our guys to compete in both styles as much as possible because that's how our program was going to develop and get better.
"You train, you compete, you evaluate, then you go back to the drawing board. The best tool to evaluate where these kids are at is competition."
Hard to really argue with the Spartans' results.
Before Chandler took over, Michigan State scored a negative-half-point at the 2015 NCAA Championships. That's -0.5 points, and no, that's not a typo. John Rizqallah was the program's lone national qualifier that year. He went 1-2 at 184 pounds, scoring a half-point for advancement in the wrestlebacks. Then the team was docked a full point for unsportsmanlike conduct.
That seems like a lifetime ago now.
Last March, Michigan State took eighth at the Big Ten Championships behind 5 wrestlers that finished sixth or better. The Spartans scored 13 points and cracked the top-30 at the 2021 NCAA Championships. They scored a total of 14.5 points at the national tournaments from 2015-19. Their eight national qualifiers in 2021 were the second-most in program history, and the most since 2000.
Cam Caffey at the 2021 NCAA Championships (Photo/Tony Rotundo, WrestlersAreWarriors.com)"Our Olympic style offseason has been an enormous part of building the folkstyle part of our program," says Caffey, a three-time NCAA qualifier who reached the bloodround last March. "This is a 12-month sport. It's been making guys a lot better."
The Greco influence can be seen during the folkstyle season. Chandler will sometimes tell his guys to go full Greco at practice and just hand-fight. Caffey says opponents will back out of certain tie-ups because he's comfortable there and they're not. Foley, Chandler's first All-American as Michigan State's coach (2019, at 125 pounds), often uses underhooks to set up his shots.
"A lot of it is the hand-fight," Foley says. "I got a lot of that from Greco, just being in those positions a lot."
Many college coaches scoff at the idea of giving Greco that much attention, but Chandler and his guys tune that noise out. There's the idea that wrestling Greco, at the very least, helps guys grow more confident in certain positions usually found in Greco matches. So rather than backing out of, say, certain tie-ups or two-on-ones or whatever the position, guys in the Michigan State room will instead wrestle through it.
"It gives me a bigger range of positions I can play with and wrestle out of and score out of it," says Caffey, who also took third at the U23 men's freestyle national tournament in 2020 and sixth at the Senior men's freestyle national championships last May.
"A lot of people close that off because they've never trained that. I can attack from a lot of other positions. When I go upper-body, a lot of my pins come out of those positions. A lot of that is Greco."
Omania agrees with that idea, too. Take his match against Michigan's Kanen Storr last February. In the first 15 seconds, Omania latches on to a two-on-one. Storr decides to hand fight. Big mistake. Omania pops up and launches Storr in a headlock. He did it again a minute later on the edge for a 12-1 lead, and ultimately prevailed 15-8.
"When I wrestle in competitions, I'm such a different feel that a lot of people don't really understand," Omania says. "The first time people wrestle me, it's usually tough. When people watch film on me, they don't really want me to put my hands on them at all.
"As soon as I get my hands on people, you can almost feel the panic and the stress set in. When I get a deep underhook or something, you can literally feel the anxiety. But it goes both ways. When I can't get my hands on you, I feel uncomfortable, too."
Omania says his consistent Greco emphasis has sharpened his folkstyle skills and forced him to evolve and adapt as a wrestler. He says it can be tough sometimes striking the balance between training Greco, where he has world and Olympic aspirations, and folkstyle, to further Michigan State's rise.
Chandler believes he's done a great job of that this summer, and says Omania is in for a big' 21-22 season. But Omania would prefer if he put off his extensive folkstyle training for a few more months. He wants to make the world team in Lincoln this weekend, which means a trip to Norway next month for the world championships.
Come March, Omania's focus will turn to the Big Ten and NCAA Championships. He says he feels fortunate to be able to train in a place that allows him to chase all of those dreams at once.
"I am forever grateful for what coach Chandler has done for my career," Omania says. "When you have freedom like that, it's just fun. You get to do what you love every single day. It's an awesome feeling having coaches that support you like that."
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