Penn State Wrestling Fans!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hello again and Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. We are a few weeks into our season and have had two competitions, so we now have more information on our guys to work with going forward. Obviously, we see our guys every day in practice but putting them in a competition setting allows us to see more of a pressure situation versus practice situation which helps to know more of where we need to focus as a team. For a lot of these guys competition is a chance to go score points as points are often difficult to come by in practice because they are competing against Olympic, World, and National Champions every day : ). Now we have a few days off for Thanksgiving and then get back to work as we prepare for 5 dual meets before the break. It has been a lot of fun so far with several new faces getting after it in competition and the upper classmen picking up where they left off last year.
Our first competition of the year was against Oklahoma in the Bryce Jordan Center. It was a great atmosphere to start the year, and the guys wrestled well. In the dual with Oklahoma, we had 6 Freshmen or sophomores wrestling and 6 new faces in the line up from a year ago, so it was great to watch these guys get after it. Our guys scored bonus points in 8 of the 10 matches and really pushed the pace in all of them.
This past weekend we competed in the Black Knight Invitational with 9 champions and 6 second place finishers. 19 of the 20 entrants we had in the tournament placed with the other one defaulting out because of injury. It was a great opportunity to see adjustments from the first dual of the year and to see some of our young guys for the first time in a PSU singlet. These competitions give us and our guys an opportunity to see where they need to continue to progress to be able to accomplish their goals at the end of the season. It is a long season, and this is just the beginning, but the goal always remains the same and that is to try to get better each week, wrestle hard for seven minutes, and enjoy it while you are doing it.
Next up we have Drexel on December 5th at Drexel and then we have Lehigh at home on December 7th. It would be great to have a ton of Penn State Fans at the Drexel dual and as usual it looks like Rec Hall will be sold out for the Lehigh match in what will be an exciting dual. Next weekend should be a lot of fun.
Following the double dual next weekend, we head to Wyoming the following weekend for a Saturday night match on December 13th and then finish the semester in Nashville, Tennessee with two duals against North Dakota State and Stanford on December 20th. It is going to be a great few weeks before the guys take off for Christmas break. After break we will also take a squad to the Southern Scuffle once again so it would be nice to see a lot of PSU fans there as well.
It has been a good start to the season, and it is exciting to think about what these guys can accomplish this year as they continue to get better as the season moves along. Lastly, I am going to include an article that came out in Men’s Health Magazine where they interviewed Cael and it gave a little more insight into the thought process and the behind the scenes things that he/we think about as a staff. Anyways, Happy Thanksgiving and thank you for all the support.
GO LIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!
