Dan Bloom ’10 and Greg Hurd ’10 concluded their Wesleyan wrestling careers at the NCAA Division III Championships, which were held March 5-6 at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Both wrestlers advanced to Nationals for the second straight year, with each repeating his results from the 2009 tournament. Bloom posted a 1-2 mark at the Championships, while Hurd went 0-2.
“It has meant a lot to wrestle at Nationals two years in a row,” Bloom wrote in an e-mail to The Argus. “It is an amazing feeling [to] be a representative for Wesleyan University on a national scale, and to have that opportunity twice was a great honor.”
Bloom won his opening match in the 2010 tournament, pinning the eighth-seeded wrestler at 125, Jon Gregory of Ithaca College, in the first round. He fell 19-6 in his next match, against Clayton Rush of Coe, the top-seeded wrestler in the bracket. In his first consolation match, Bloom dropped a 6-4 decision to Jay Swanson of Luther College. In 2009, Bloom dropped his opening match and went 1-1 in the consolation round.
Hurd had a difficult draw, going up against Mike Schmitz of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in the second round. Schmitz, the third-seeded wrestler in the 174-pound weight class, pinned Hurd in the first period. In the consolation bracket, Hurd fell to Stevens Tech grappler Robert Bishop, 9-2.
Bloom’s victory gave the Cardinals four team points, good for a tie for 38th place out of 59 teams at the tournament. Last year, the Cardinals tied for 52nd out of 62 teams with 0.5 team points.
Both wrestlers attended the NCAA meet as the New England champion in their respective weight classes. Bloom was also the New England champion at 125 in 2009, while Hurd received a wild-card bid. Bloom and Hurd conclude their four years in Middletown with a combined record of 195-63; Bloom amassed a career record of 104-34—including a 34-6 mark in 2008-09—while Hurd went 91-29, including a 35-6 showing last season.
“I had an amazing four years at Wesleyan (on and off the mat),” Bloom wrote. “All of the accolades…are great, but most of all I will take away the amazing friendships I have created with my teammates. The other four seniors on the team are some of my best friends here at Wesleyan, and I respect them so much for all the hard work we put in together. I am going to miss them and I will certainly miss, and envy, all the guys still on the team who get to keep competing.”
Bloom and Hurd lead a senior class that combined to go 108-48 in 2009-10 and graduates with a four-year dual-match record of 39-28-2. While the class of 2010 will prove difficult to replace, Bloom noted that the team’s strong group of underclassmen, led by a freshman class that combined for 52 individual wins in 2009-10, will help ensure Wesleyan remains one of the preeminent New England squads.
“I think that the seniors this year can confidently say that we will leave the Wesleyan wrestling team in a better place than we received it when we were freshmen,” Bloom wrote. “We have spent the last four years really building the program up, bringing in great recruiting classes, and changing the mentality of Wesleyan wrestling. We have a great motivated group of underclassmen who have seen how hard we worked to achieve all of our accolades and I think that we have challenged them to out-do us. The future of Wesleyan wrestling has never been brighter.”
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