Foul Territory
A sports blog with no specific focus, though I like wrestling and baseball
1.10.2005
Saw Some Matches
I took in my first wrestling match of the season on Saturday. NC State hosted a bunch of dual meets. The best team there turned out to be North Dakota State University, as they were able to take out the hosts along with Appalachian State and Duke. The Wolfpack did manage defeat an overmatched Anderson College squad as well as Gardner-Webb.
It was good to get the chance to see some wrestling after so long just going to practice. I had seen the results of the NCSU matches on the internet, but it's just not the real thing. To be honest, they didn't look that good. They totally outclassed Anderson, but some of the matches were too close, and the sharpness wasn't there. It was the first match back after a layoff, so I can chalk it up to rust, since I haven't seen them in action much this year. Hopefully, they'll get it all together and wrestle better this weekend, since they're taking on the highly ranked Fighting Illini from the University of Illinois. I don't imagine they'll win the match, but I think they can take a few from the home team.
Additionally, I got the chance to have a long talk with Clar Anderson, the coach at Duke. I first met Clar when he recruited me to wrestle at Duke way back in the good old days of 1998-1999. I then went with some of his team on a two week trip to Russia in May of 2000. That was a trip, from beginning to end. Ask me about it some time. I hadn't seen him since that trip until this past weekend. We talked about Duke and stuff going on in our lives. He told me about the criminally low budget for wrestling at Duke, let alone the complete lack of scholarships. Just put it this way, Coach K's salary is over six times the entire wrestling budget. No wrestling scholarships and less assistant coach money than Messiah at a school with an endowment over $2.6 billion. If anyone can explain this to me, I'd love to hear it. Anyhow, it was good to see Clar, and he invited me to come wrestle with his guys any time, which is nice. So at least I got that going for me.
It was good to get the chance to see some wrestling after so long just going to practice. I had seen the results of the NCSU matches on the internet, but it's just not the real thing. To be honest, they didn't look that good. They totally outclassed Anderson, but some of the matches were too close, and the sharpness wasn't there. It was the first match back after a layoff, so I can chalk it up to rust, since I haven't seen them in action much this year. Hopefully, they'll get it all together and wrestle better this weekend, since they're taking on the highly ranked Fighting Illini from the University of Illinois. I don't imagine they'll win the match, but I think they can take a few from the home team.
Additionally, I got the chance to have a long talk with Clar Anderson, the coach at Duke. I first met Clar when he recruited me to wrestle at Duke way back in the good old days of 1998-1999. I then went with some of his team on a two week trip to Russia in May of 2000. That was a trip, from beginning to end. Ask me about it some time. I hadn't seen him since that trip until this past weekend. We talked about Duke and stuff going on in our lives. He told me about the criminally low budget for wrestling at Duke, let alone the complete lack of scholarships. Just put it this way, Coach K's salary is over six times the entire wrestling budget. No wrestling scholarships and less assistant coach money than Messiah at a school with an endowment over $2.6 billion. If anyone can explain this to me, I'd love to hear it. Anyhow, it was good to see Clar, and he invited me to come wrestle with his guys any time, which is nice. So at least I got that going for me.
Andy, 7:14 PM
