fishbane

I suspect multiple NCAA champ transfers is probably the least unique on the list. Schultz was also nearly a non-state champ. He won states his senior year and had never won a wresting tournament in his life before the first round of the post season his senior year.

Academic struggles are the most sound reason to repeat a grade. There are ways to catch up like tutors, summer school, and independent study. If the struggles are only in one subject that is less of a reason to be held back in middle school and high school. If you don't get algebra in 8th grade, you can still take that class in high school. You might not learn calculus in high school, but you'll be ready to learn it in college. When academic struggles are manufactured like with Cary Kolat it seems like a waste of time. In 8th grade Kolat's dad told him to pay attention, but fail intentionally. He received 4 Fs, 1 A, and repeated 8th grade. Taking Kolat as an example, holding him back in 8th grade undoubtably held back his academic progress, but it also probably held back his athletic progress. He placed 3rd at the Midlands as a high school sophomore. He was 4th at the Olympic trials in 1992 when he was a high school senior. If he had not intentionally failed 8th grade he could have been wrestling in those trials after a year in a college room. Do you think he could have made more progress by 1992 if he had traded that extra year in a middle school room for one in a college room? Kolat probably thinks so Though trying to make an Olympic team in high school may be a fairly unique problem, the principle is more universally applicable. Holding someone back in 8th grade holds back their wrestling progress too. Take any wrestler in 8th grade. Pick a date more than 1 year in the future. The goal is to make this individual the best possible wrestler by that date. Is repeating 8th grade an optimal strategy for this challenge? Staying in middle school and wrestling 7th/8th graders or not at all because they aren't eligible, compared with spending that year in a high school room competing against 9th-12th graders. Almost universally the choice will be to go directly to high school. The reason why it seems like holding a wrestler back can have an athletic benefit is because the goalposts are moved at the same time. The question isn't how can I be the best wrestler possible 4 years from now. It's comparing your potential results 4 years from now with your potential results 5 years from now against a field 1 year less experienced on average.

He was a 2x NCAA champ. 1x State champ. https://intermatwrestle.com/articles/2068/One-on-One-with-Tim-Hartung? Cody is Cael's older brother. So little only in the sense of being physically smaller to Cael, but three years older. He lost to Guerrero twice in the OT in the NCAA finals.

I'm not sure. I think 20 is about the oldest a normal track student should be upon graduation from high school. If he graduates at 20, then redshirts and wrestles 4 years that could make him 25 his 5th year in college. Alternatively, if he graduates high school at 19, then does a grey shirt/gap year before enrolling full time, and uses a redshirt in his career it can happen. In theory an individual could delay enrolling in elementary school until the oldest compulsory age which would have them turning 20 some time during their senior year of HS. That person could then defer enrolling in college for 1 year whilst continuing to wrestle with a club/RTC and not sacrifice any eligibility. They could then take a redshirt and up to two Olympic redshirts during their college career (assuming timing works out and they qualify) along with 4 years of competition. Such a person could turn 27 before NCAAs their senior/4th year of college competition. A person could break the record and be the oldest ever NCAA champion doing that. No need for injury waivers, pandemics, repeating grades they had already passes, intentionally failing grades, religious missions, military service, or time away from training/competition.

During the Iowa-PSU broadcast on BTN they said that 1/28 is RBY's 24th birthday. After graduating high school in 2018 at 19 years old he wrestled as a true freshman at PSU in the 2018-2019 college season. His career has been 8-COVID-1-1-?. In an upcoming Flo film he talks about how his grandfather held him back in 8th grade because he thought he was a little bit small to be a 106lb. He said he did nothing, just stayed home for a whole year, trained, and played video games everyday. RBY was 182-0 in high school.

@WrestleknownothingSparks just said that Bo Nickal predicted a 60-0 dual win by the Nittany Lions. Now that's a homer pick!

You listed 3 things. Guess he's not good at multitasking...

Alas, that was not a selected match. I actually think when Dean switched to the touching the foot to the head strategy he did Amos a favor. When he had his left knee in he could probably generate more force because he could his legs too. The head-to-foot technique was mostly arms. Although he may have also made the right call as the referee may have put a stop to it if he really ranked on it in that position.

This makes me think of the bow and arrow he put on Amos. It looked brutal. When he put his far knee into Amos's back it looked like he could have put a ton of leverage into it. He could have just extended his body to put an amazing about of leverage into Amos's back. It looked like he started to and then took his left knee out of that position, postured up and tried to touch Amos's foot to his head. He came alarming close to succeeding.

Yeah no doubt individual considerations will be important and retrospectively it's easy to look back and see how it might have helped, but I also think that holding a wrestler/student back in 8th grade is almost never consistent with getting better at wrestling or more generally any sport. One could look back and think that they would have won more matches in high school/college being held back a year, but that could simply be measuring yourself against a different set of peers. If you look at yourself and make the goal to be the best 15 year old wrestler, or 19 year old wrestler, or any age wrestler that you can be has progress really been made against that standard? Or in other words, two identical wrestlers finish 8th grade. One stays back and repeats 8th grade. The other goes to 9th grade and wrestles at the high school. Who is the better wrestler? If you have them wrestle at the end of the year who do you think wins? Who has learned more academically? If given the same standardized test who does better? Do you think if you had stayed back and repeated 8th grade that you at the end of 8th grade for the second time could have beaten the real you after 9th grade?

Ed Ruth didn't win a PIAA title, but he won national preps his senior year (2009). It's true he didn't win PIAA 9-11th grades, but isn't exactly that I had in mine. Baumgartner is a good one.

Yeah, I thought the dates were a little too early for the Vietnam draft but it could have been voluntary military service. The 5 years off is just one of the interesting facts about this career though. There are many aspects that make it fairly unique. Two-time NCAA that never won a state title in high school. There can't be very many of those. Keith Gavin is a 1x champ that did that. Don't know any other 2, 3, or 4xers off the top of my head. A multi time NCAA champion that transferred schools. There can't be too many of those. TJ Jaworsky, Nick Suriano, Brent Metcalf, Cary Kolat. A multiple time NCAA champion that won a subsequent title at a lower weight than a previous title. There are only 7 of those. Nick Suriano also among them. An NCAA champion that took multiple years off in the middle of their college career. Nick Suriano, Max Dean, and Yianni D. didn't wrestle in NCAA competition for two consecutive years. Winning NCAAs at the age of 26 years 7mo puts him amongst the oldest NCAA champions. The oldest is Charlie Jones who was 27 when he won a title in 1993 wrestling for Purdue.

Yeah I mostly agree. A 23 year old training continuously should on average have the advantage over a 31 year old that was 10 years retired and doing something else entirely. I think this is allowed to some degree with the current D1 rules. Famously retired NBA player JR Smith was ruled eligible to play D1 NCAA golf. He had never previously attended college having joined the NBA straight out of high school and had never played golf professionally. If JR Smith wins an NCAA golf championship there shouldn't be an asterisk on it even though it would be much more interesting than the average college gold champion. So a 21 year old who never enrolled in college and had not trained in wrestling in 10 year might well be allowed under the rules to wrestle D1. But why change rules to allow a allow a 31 year old that competed D1 for two years to take 10 years off and then return and wrestle two more years? I'm fine with this person's D1 career being over. They can still wrestle D2/D3 if they go back to complete their educaiton.

Are you talking purely athletically or do you feel it would have helped your educationally and professionally too? Is wrestling part of your profession today? If not do you think winning a more matches in 9th grade and possibly a few more throughout the rest of high school/college would have been worth delaying the start of your career a year or two?

In professional sports and athletics at large it doesn't. College athletics are activities for students to do whilst pursuing their education. Running minor/professional sports leagues is not part of the mission of any university. With all the money that's come into college sports and NIL, absolutely if the NCAA eliminated limits like 4 years of competitions, 5 year clock, 1 year grace period for enrollment, professionalism, ect there absolutely would be individuals that remain in college competing for 5-10 years and marginally pursuing education simply to stay eligible or former professionals that retire and go back to school for the competition or money earning potential and not education. It makes sense that college and universities agreed to set limits so they don't end up accidentally running professional sports leagues and detracting from their primary mission. Unfortunately, the current rules are only somewhat effective. Yes, a person who takes 10 years off and then goes back to school and wants to wrestle isn't what the rules are intending to stamp out, but its sufficiently rare to begin with that they shouldn't try and work the rules around it and there are always the lower divisions. Lower divisions have different rules for eligibility. Someone who wrestled in high school and took 10 yeas off would be eligible to wrestle D3 as there the eligibility clock stops when not enrolled. There have been several instances of athletes competing in their 30s in D3. The lower divisions generally don't have the money incentive of D1 nor the platform, so the thinking is it should not be abused in the way that it could be in division 1.

It's true. There are maybe 3 programs where such criticism wouldn't be completely absurd. Couple Iowa being one of them with the Brandses being small and the range of weights in question being at the heavy extreme, and people will read more into it than they should. Back to predictions Flo posted there whiteboard war and Bray picked Iowa to win 21-12. It's a more lopsided Iowa win than anyone predicted in this thread.

I think that is fine, but there should be some limits on it. The mission of all Colleges and Universities are tied to education. It makes sense to have the education open to all students regardless of age and for a long period of time. Studying at a university for 10 years plus is entirely justified by the mission. That could be 4-5 years for a Bachelors degree and 5-6 years for a Phd. Those are completely normal. Athletics started as just some activity for students to do in free time whilst pursuing education. I get the line of thinking that if a student wants to do some some campus activity during that time they should be able to. But with all the money in D1 athletics you have to put some limits on it or else it is just hard to justify allowing an athlete to stick around 10 years pursuing an athletic career whilst doing a minimum amount of education on the side.

This isn't really a new phenomenon. Greg Ruth was a double champ for Oklahoma back in 1965 and 1966. There must be some interesting back story to his career. He graduate high school in 1958 having never won PA state. He was 2nd at 145 in 1957. In 1958 and 159 he attending Lehigh and finished 4th at EIWAs at 157lbs in 1959. Then he took 5 years off and transferred to Oklahoma where he won a title at 167lbs in 1965 before dropping to 160lbs and winning a second title in 1966. He had to be at least 26 when he won the second title. Of course back then 1st year students weren't allowed to compete so maybe he wasn't beating 17 and 18 year olds in 1966.

I don't recall making that argument, nor saying that Perry didn't count. Borschel is the better example to refute the statement that Iowa/Brands hasn't produced a champion over 157lbs. More over 157, more recent, coached exclusively by Brands. Putting number on the statement it essentially said Iowa/Brands produced 0 champs in the top 5 weights since Brands took over (2006). If Perry were the only exception it would only require a slight change to the statement. No champs in the top 4 weights since 2006 would be true or No champs in the top 5 weights since 2008. Borschel is also an exception. So to make the statement true it would have to be no champs in the top 3 weights since 2006 or no champs in the top 5 weights since 2010. One weight up and two years more recent. I don't think the best example of Brands "producing" a champion is taking a finalist who already had beaten an NCAA champion to a title. Perry probably wins a title at some point under Zalesky. Maybe you argue that he wouldn't have beaten Hendricks, but they were close before Brands took over. Two years before they wrestled three times and they were all close 1-2 point matches, overtime, ect. Even if you have Hendricks as a prohibitive favorite (90% chance of winning) after 6 matches it's only a coin flip that Hendricks wins them all. At some point Perry gets one by him. Heck even Askren was 1-7 against Pendleton. Brands deserves some credit for getting the best match out of Perry on the biggest stage, but not as much as getting Borschel to a title. The sentiment from the original statement still have some underlying truth. Iowa has struggled to produce champions at the heavier weights under Brands. They have had success at 165 and 174 under Brands consistently producing title contenders. Perry, Borschel, Kemerer, and Marinelli were all legitimate title contenders. They either made finals, were the 1 seed at nationals or won titles. Warner is the only finalist Iowa has had 184-285 since 2004 and both of them were somewhat surprise finalists coming from the 6 and 10 seeds. Their last title from the top 3 weights was Steve Mocco 20 years ago.

Jay Borschel is probably a better example. He was a Brands recruit. Perry was a Zalesky recruit and had finished 2nd and 3rd under Z. Borschel was more over 157 and more of a Brands product than Perry.

What I remember most distinctly of the wrestling scene in that movie was that the out-of-bounds line on the mat was rectangular and not a circle. You can kind of see it in the photo you posted. The outer line on the mat is farther from the inner circle on the left and right side of the image, but closer in the middle. This would not be the case if they are concentric circle. I have never encountered such a wrestling mat in the real world.

Askren, CP, and JD all picked Woods on FRL this morning. Below are their predictions

He may not care about duals very much, but should PSU win this one and finish the season undefeated it will be his 7 such season at PSU. Gable had 7 undefeated dual seasons in 21 years at Iowa. This will 7 in 14 at PSU for Cael.

With the changes to the redshirt rule for this season wouldn't it make more sense for Iowa to wrestle Ayala at 125 if they were to bump Lee to 133?

In case you missed it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lXhHMXT03I&t=20649s