“Wait 48 hours?”
After our dual with UNC we had a great reception in the hall of fame for the wrestling alumni of Stanford. There was a great mix of old and young, and everyone was having a good time. Certainly, there was disappointment in the result of the dual, but generally there was an amazing feeling in the air. Most of the people were bonded by a shared experience of wrestling, but more specifically wrestling for Stanford.
In a lot of ways that experience differed vastly for each individual. Perhaps they had a different head coach. Maybe they wrestled in a different place on campus. Some actually had to train off campus. For all of them there were new faces every year, so the dynamic of the team was ever changing.
But some things were the same whether an individual graduated in the 1970’s or 2010’s. A group of young men joining together, sweating and bleeding daily, testing their limits both physically and mentally, failing, learning, stumbling, succeeding, surprising themselves, and the list goes on. Whether or not they knew it at the time, all were on a mission toward self-discovery.
Isn’t that what wrestling for Stanford was all about? College is a magical time where the primary focus is to make yourself the best you can be, while also simultaneously trying to figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life. Some figure it out in four years and some don’t, but all enter as one person and leave very differently.
Even though I am the head coach of the program, I am an “outsider” in this group, one who only observes the shared experience. Well, I guess I do a little more than “observe,” it is my job to “provide” a big part of that experience. In that role, as it relates to the alumni, it is my hope to reconnect as many people as possible to the magic of being a part of a college wrestling team.
To those who stayed connected or recently re-connected, I hope you reflect fondly on your experience. For those who haven’t, don’t wait a day longer, our time machine can take you back to your younger self, and to those who knew you then…that can be scary, I know…but once you jump in I know you wont regret it.
It’s interesting, I have been doing this a long time at multiple schools, and have met a lot of individuals who had a bad experience while wrestling for their particular alma mater. They can’t remember any great moments and some quit the team. They don’t see any reason to reconnect.
But something happens when they re-engage. It often starts slow, but they start remembering the good times and forgetting the bad. The experience they had in their memory starts to transform. As they see their former teammates, with families and professions, the people part of experience comes more to life. When they interact with the current team they are excited to provide advice and touch what they are currently experiencing. It’s a second chance of sorts, and without a doubt, some of the most engaged alumni in all my coaching stints, who get the most out of being reconnecting with the program, had, what they considered, a bad wrestling experience.
Back to the UNC match.
I was speaking with some alumni about this newsletter at the reception after the dual and joked that it was going to be a tough one to write. One alum suggested I wait 48 hours, so I wouldn’t be too emotional. I related his comment to a pretty well known best practice of waiting until the next day to send an email to someone you are upset with. The email can get written, but don’t hit send. I was probably overthinking the situation but I asked myself, “Why did that alum suggest I wait 48 hours? Usually 24 hours is enough. Was our performance at the dual that bad?”
It was, in fact, a pretty bad performance, but perhaps it was just what was needed before we compete in the postseason.
The curse of the “almost takedown” got us again. Hayden Hidlay said it brilliantly in his post meet speech: “Scoring a takedown is a lot like Pass/Fail. There are no grey areas. You don’t get .75 points for almost getting a takedown.”
This was a very good point. We were close to scoring takedowns in multiple matches but we didn’t get the points. Actually, in Tyler Knox’s match he hit an illegal move from rear standing to try to get the takedown, so his “almost takedown” gave him a -1…things just were not going our way. UNC on the other hand, scored when they had the opportunity.
Also, we had issues in the third period. We either gave up matches we were winning or didn’t do enough to take the lead from our opponents. When two great wrestlers are facing each other, the third period is critically important! We have to win the third! I’m not really concerned with who scores the first takedown, but rather who scores the last takedown.
If you have been following along with these newsletters I wrote about these two issues (“almost takedowns” and the third period blues) when referring to our disasterous second session at Midlands. We addressed those issues after the round, the team course corrected, and we won the tournament.
Perhaps the team forgot about that, so UNC was a good reminder of where our focus needs to be. We will make the changes necessary heading into the ACC’s.
As far as bright spots go Jason Miranda was laser focused in his win against a ranked opponent. Early in the week I told him to allow himself to achieve great things and I truly believe he is on that path. Jason couldn’t get enough wrestling this weekend as he and Coach Hidlay flew to a tournament on Sunday in Wyoming to bolster his win loss record and he was successful going 3-0. The wins should solidify Jason earning a NCAA allocation to the conference, which will also help ensure that he will make it to Philly as well.
Nick Stemmet continued his winning ways with a close win, but the score was not indicative of how well he controlled the match. Nicks has made a jump as a competitor in the last few weeks, mostly due to his new found laser focus, and this was one more match to reinforce this better version of his former self.
In one of the more interesting bouts, Hunter Garvin faced former teammate, Charlie Darracott. I coached Charlie last year when he was a senior here and loved the time I got to spend with him. Hunter and Charlie trained together for two years and knew each other well, so as you can imagine it was a close match, but Hunter got the job done in overtime with a takedown.
Even in a loss I thought Abas competed at a very high level. His opponent was a 2-time All-American and currently ranked in the top 5. He is incredibly hard to score on. Abas was close a couple times, but couldn’t convert the takedowns. I hope we get to see this one again at the ACC Championships.
Well, that closes out the dual meet portion of our season and I’m proud of the team’s performance. Giving up a forfeit at 125 in every dual does not leave us many options for a team win other than winning 6 out of 9 matches, so in this situation a team must find some “magic” to pull out the win and we were able to do this numerous times throughout the season. We finished the season 10-5 and ranked in the final top 20. To those that argue wrestling is not a team sport, we wrestled TWENTY different wrestlers in the dual meet lineups to get the wins that we did. A complete team effort!
The most important thing is that we had a lot of fun doing it. This is an amazing group of young men and coaches, and I wouldn’t have wanted to be with anyone else on this season’s journey. We didn’t get the ACC team title, or go undefeated, but made some great memories and I’m grateful for every second I had with them.
On to the postseason with ACC’s March 9 and the NCAA’s March 20-22! We have a team that can certainly make some noise!
No. 16 North Carolina 24, No. 17 Stanford 9
125: #11 Spencer Moore (UNC) won by forfeit
133: ##11 Ethan Oakley (UNC) dec. #6 Tyler Knox (STAN), 4-2
141: #21 Jason Miranda (STAN) dec. #22 Jayden Scott (UNC), 2-0
149: #5 Lachlan McNeil (UNC) dec. #15 Jaden Abas (STAN), 8-1 (SV)
157: #23 Sonny Santiago (UNC) dec. Zach Hanson (STAN), 13-7
165: #13 Hunter Garvin (STAN) dec. Charlie Darracott (UNC), 4-1 (SV)
174: #18 Joshua Ogunsanya (UNC) dec. #4 Lorenzo Norman (STAN), 15-13
184: #19 Gavin Kane (UNC) dec. Cole Han-Lindemyer (STAN), 6-1
197: #15 Nick Stemmet (STAN) dec. Robert Platt (UNC), 5-4
285: Nolan Neves (UNC) dec. #29 Peter Ming (STAN), 3-2
Join us for camp this summer!
Register: Stanford Wrestling Camp June 26-29
Chris Ayres
Matt Gentry Head Coach of Wrestling
Twitter: @CoachOfTrees
Insta: @ayres157
