Chicks Heart Fights

Mark from Rev Wrestling pointed out an interesting trend to me-wrestling has more coverage from the media than it has in the past. Well, it seems so. I have no empirical data to support this claim, but there have been many great profiles of wrestlers in large publications, including:

• T.C. Dantzler in the Sun-Times
• Jake Deitchler in USA Today
• Henry Cejudo in the Arizona Republic
• A visit by Cejudo and Deitchler to the offices of ESPN the Magazine
• Steve Mocco in USA Today
• Dremiel Byers in the Charlotte Observer
• Ali Bernard in the Pioneer Press
• Randi Miller in the Kansas City Star
• Best of all, you can download  Doug Schwab wallpapers at the  Des Moines Register.

I can’t explain the uptick in coverage, but I am not going to question it. Increased coverage for the sport can only be good for it.

So how about dem USA Greco-Roman wrestlers? Rich Bender, the executive director of USA Wrestling, called today the most important day in US Greco-Roman wrestling history, and I have to agree with him.

Rulon’s win, though important, created a well-known figure in the sport and helped with the popularity, but did not necessarily say that the US truly had a great Greco program. This team win was the combined effort of USA Wrestling, the Army’s WCAP, the Olympic Training Center, and the USOEC, not to mention the many college programs where many of the wrestlers got their start. Of course, this was also due to the hard work and sacrifice of the wrestlers themselves - guys like Lindsey Durlacher, Brad Vering and Dremiel Byers, veterans with a never say die attitude, a young star like Harry Lester, and hard working role players like Joe Betterman, TC Dantzler, and Justin Ruiz. Well done, gentlemen. Supremely well done.

In other USAW news, the two freestyle members who wrestled today did not do as well. Henry Cejudo and my crush Mike Zadick were both eliminated early in the tournament. Tomorrow, Doug Schwab, Joe Heskett and Joe Williams will take to the mat.

(Photo credit: Larry Slater)

As I mentioned in the post about Pan-Am games, Henry Cejudo jumped from high school to training for the Olympics in Colorado Springs, and depending on Henry’s success next year, he could be paving the way for more athletes to skip college. I hope that doesn’t happen. (Note: I’m aware that Henry jumped for his own reasons, and I’m not questioning his decision in any way, shape or form.)

For one selfish reason, I love college wrestling. Going to the NCAA tournament, Midlands, and assorted duals throughout the season are highlights of my year. The rivalries, the intensity of the matches, the camaraderie of the athletes, the coaches, the fans-it’s part of the reason why I love wrestling so much. Plucking the top athletes out of the mix would make the sport weaker at the college level. Can you imagine if Cael Sanderson or John Smith would have skipped school and begun to train immediately for the Olympics? The wrestling world would have been deprived of watching the most amazing wrestlers; wrestlers who helped give the sport some of it’s greatest publicity.

Also, I would be concerned for the athletes. Wrestling is not a sport that allows athletes to retire because they made enough money during their career. Wrestlers need to prepare for their lives after wrestling, which in today’s world, requires a college education. Even if the wrestlers can find a job coaching, that job requires a heck of a lot more than just knowing how to win a match. Coaches need to be savvy educators, marketers, counselors, and managers. Many colleges even require a degree for coaching positions. For a wrestler’s financial security, college is really the smartest idea.

On the other hand, a wrestler focusing on freestyle or Greco-Roman earlier on should theoretically help America at the international level. Having a wrestler jump between folkstyle and freestyle, or folkstyle and Greco-Roman, may not be the best method to beat wrestlers from countries who only have only focused on one style of wrestling for their entire life, but at the same time, the current wrestling system should not be sacrificed for Olympic gold. The two should be able to work together to make US wrestling the best in the world.

To me, the best example of how two can co-exist is the US Olympic Educational Center at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan. Though, sadly for the collegiate fans, USOEC athletes do not compete in the NCAA. However, USOEC athletes have the benefit of world-class Greco-Roman training and a college education. Harry Lester, the GR bronze world medalist at 66kg, and in my opinion, one of the most exciting wrestlers to watch today, trains at the USOEC. He is the first USOEC athlete to make the senior world team, and I can’t wait to see what he does next. And when he leaves his shoes on the mat, he will still have a world of opportunity open to him because he will have a college degree. When wrestling fans want to open their checkbooks to support the sport, it seems to me that the USOEC is rather deserving of your support.

Cuba, who won the freestyle team title at the Pan-Am Games, absolutely dominated. held this past week in Brazil. They won five gold medals out of seven weight classes, winning five out of seven head-to-head match ups with the US over the tournament. The US came in second, with Joe Heskett, Andy Hrovat, Tommy Rowlands and Mike Zadick winning silver, and Doug Schwab and Daniel Cormier taking the bronze. Henry Cejudo (more on him later) won the only gold. Considering that Cuba and the US were the only countries of any true wrestling merit at the Games, this was not a great outing by Team USA. Cuba, a country of a little more than 11 million people. (For comparison, Illinois has 12 million people.)

This can’t bode well for the US team for the worlds in September. Granted, the US was missing a few of their top athletes, Joe Williams and Steve Mocco, but even with them, Cuba still would have been dominant. When you throw Iran and Russia into the mix, it’s just not pretty. How many freestyle champions can the US feasibly have? Any? Daniel Cormier and Joe Williams are the two most experienced wrestlers on the team. Cormier has shown flashes of brilliance, but that’s all they have been. Flashes. His conditioning and drive are completely unreliable. As for Joe, I look forward to seeing what he can do. He has some consistency, and I think he knows that the next Olympics may be his last chance.

Then of course, there’s Henry Cejudo, the 20 year old 55 kg-er who has stormed onto the wrestling scene. His win over Sammie Henson Matt Azevedo at World Team Trials was undoubtedly a passing of the torch. If he wins Olympic gold next year, he may clear the path for more high school wrestlers to skip college and go straight to Colorado Springs. (I’ll talk about that more in a future post.) He is being called the future of USA Wrestling, and for USA Wrestling’s sake, I hope he is. Our current crop of top wrestlers need to either step it up, or get out of the way. Otherwise, our fond memories of the USA taking home gold from Worlds and the Olympics will be only that, memories.