Following an impressive season debut at the Doug Parker Tournament, the Cardinals made the journey to Rochester, New York to take on the competition at the RIT Tournament. The tournament provided the team with a chance to get top-notch match experience before starting dual matches.
Highlighting the day’s events, Greg Hurd ’10 rocked his opponents and seized the title at 174 pounds. Hurd, ranked seventh in the nation, went 4-0 in his matches, bringing him to 7-1 in varsity matches this season.
“Each tournament progressively gets more challenging due to the level of teams and competition at each tournament,” Coach Drew Black told the Argus in an e-mail.
The tournament featured stellar performances from four other Wesleyan wrestlers who had top place finishes. At 125 pounds, Dan Bloom ’10 took second, and Chris Alvanos ’11 was not far behind at sixth. Dan Conroy ’11 came in fourth in the heavyweight class.
Captain Josh Wildes ’08 finished in fifth place at 133 pounds. Wildes took down Travis Drappi, ranked number one in the conference, from Rhode Island College. The two competitors will repeat the rivalry match this season, the first of which will come on Friday.
The combined efforts of the team resulted in a seventh-place finish in a field of 14 teams.
“I am very excited about this team and where we are right now,” Black wrote. “We had five wrestlers place including our nationally ranked 174-pound competitor Greg Hurd, who came home with the title. We have another handful of wrestlers who were on the verge of placing who could have catapulted our team into the top three.”
The team is training hard, and there has been considerable improvement. Spending more time on the mat and staying in good health will lead to even more improvements and continued success.
“Training is going well,” Black wrote. “Since day one, I could see that this team was a dedicated, tough bunch of young men. They are all hard workers with talent, so training has gone well.”
Black thinks the team has been improving each week.
“Each individual on this team seems to be very coachable,” he wrote. “They listen, learn, try, and you can see the improvements. If we are going to be successful, this is an important ingredient, and I am very pleased with the effort and willingness to get better each week.”
On Friday, Wesleyan opens dual-match action at Rhode Island College. Not only did RIC take the title at the RIT tournament, but the Anchormen are the 28th-ranked team in the nation and the top-ranked team of 15 in the New England Wrestling Conference. Clearly, the team will have to step up to the challenge and face the competition again.
Black has a lot of confidence in the team’s prospects for the remainder of the season.
“We are a solid team and we will be right in the mix of great things,” he wrote. “We must be humble, keep working hard, keep learning and improving and, most importantly, stay healthy. No one should be satisfied where they are at, and the goal is to improve each week and peak for our New England Championships in February.”
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