I’m not sure I’ve posted anything about wrestling, I probably have expounded on too many subjects and I’m too lazy to really look, BUT…!
I’ve gotten back into coaching. I’ve missed the sport, and I’ve felt too out of shape, so I started working with a local club in my area called Doughboys. If you are in the northern MA/southern NH area and you wrestle, I’m sure you’ve heard of them. If not, take a look at their website and if you’re interested in wrestling, register early because they have so many kids here it’s insane. I’m coaching and it’s nice to be in the room again, on the mat again, and getting back into the flow again.
Coming from Western New York and taking a moment of reflection, we had a decently high caliber level of wrestling-Buffalo, Rochester, Northern PA and Ohio areas all offered a level of competition that I think is constantly overlooked in the sport. PA will always dominate high school wrestling, and it rightfully should, but to ignore the fact that Kyle Dake (Section 5), Yanni D (Section 5), Vito Aru (8-11/Long Island, but I’m counting it as a win for NY) are on the world team or challenging for slots AND Jon Jones (5 again), Gregor Gillespie (5 dammit), Rashad Jones (6, finally), and a few others have been UFC champions or pretty darn close says a lot about the quality of combat sports hailing from New York and the western area. My mentor, Jeff Prescott was a 2x NCAA champ from Penn State, coming from little Olean, NY, and strangely enough there was another national champ in Clar Anderson, who now coaches for the high school team and formerly coached for Duke University for many years. Cornell has challenged Penn State in the past few years for team dominance and flirted as closely as they can and that says a lot, not counting perennial powers like Brockport, Ithaca and more.
I think my general point is that I can respect that my area has carved a strong little niche of being a powerful combat sport and wrestling hotspot when you fully evaluate it and it’s good to know that those kids are continuing on to make a difference in the highest levels of wrestling, combat sports, UFC and more. I hope to continue to streak of influencing some kids to become better wrestlers.