It wasn’t an easy decision, but it was one Dustin Schlatter felt he had to make.

After talking to his father, the Massillon, Ohio native then met with the University of Minnesota coaching staff. Following an injury-plagued 21-5 junior campaign on the wrestling mats, where he earned his third All-American honor, the 149-pounder felt he needed to take a redshirt during his senior campaign.

The move would leave the Golden Gophers with just one senior in the regular lineup for the 2008-09 campaign, but in addition to getting his body back to full strength, Schlatter thought the timing was right in order to reach his future goals — a berth on the U.S. World Team in 2009 and a run at the 2012 Olympic squad.

“It was hard because we had such a young team, but we’ll be young again next year and I think I will be able to help out with my leadership,” he says. “I just needed the time to get healthy and then work on things during my international training.”

Council Bluffs, Ia. — Greco-Roman wrestling got to be a drag for Mark Rial, especially after a subpar showing at the 2008 Olympic Trials.

A move back to Cedar Falls, where his college wrestling career began, helped Rial get back on friendly terms with the wrestling style that allows only upper-body moves.

Rial, a state champion at Fort Dodge and an assistant coach at Northern Iowa, made the finals of the 145.5-pound weight class in the Greco-Roman challenge tournament at Mid-America Center on Sunday. He faced reigning National Open champion Faruk Sahin in a best-of-three series for a spot on the World Championships squad Sunday night.

In freestyle, Iowa assistant coach Jared Frayer at 145.5 and Bryce Hasseman of Iowa City at 185 pounds, along with Northern Iowa assistant coach Tervel Dlagnev at 264.5, faced National Open champions to determine the rest of the squad that will compete in Denmark in September.

Frayer was to face former Iowa State NCAA champion Trent Paulson – who grew up in Council Bluffs – while Hasseman met Jake Herbert and Dlagnev faced former Iowa and Oklahoma State NCAA champion Steve Mocco.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Three-times Olympic freestyle wrestling champion Buvaisar Saitiev has decided to retire after a career that has spaned nearly two decades.

Saitiev, 34, one of only three wrestlers to have won three Olympic titles, was thinking of bidding for a record fourth gold at the 2012 Games in London but then changed his mind.
“I’m not sure I can still compete at the highest level,” the Chechen, who won Olympic gold in Atlanta in 1996, in Athens in 2004 and last year in Beijing, told reporters in his home town of Krasnoyarsk.

Reporting by Gennady Fyodorov; Editing by John Mehaffey

By Mike Mooneyham

A serious car accident nearly 33 years ago ended one of the most heralded careers in wrestling history.

But it didn’t come close to ending the still-unfolding legacy of Danny Hodge.

Hodge, who suffered a broken neck but miraculously survived the near-death experience, notes that he can’t look backwards anymore due to the injuries.

“I have to turn around to look back.”

But that’s no problem, the easy-going Oklahoman explains. “I’ve already seen it.”

What Hodge has seen from the rear-view mirror of life is the American Dream. A small-town boy who grew up in Depression-era Oklahoma survived the hardships and rigors of the time to become one of the greatest wrestlers to ever live.

As a youth Hodge, the son of an alcoholic father and a mother who dealt with severe depression, picked cotton and plucked chickens to help ends meet. His home burned down when he was 9, and his mother suffered severe burns over 70 percent of her body, necessitating blood transfusions, a number of skin grafts and lengthy hospital stays.

A product of a splintered family, he was raised in later years by a grandfather described by Hodge as “always drinking, always mad,” and was the recipient of numerous beatings.

Former Hawkeye, 49, wins pair of matches at regional tourney

By Jim Nelson

Waterloo Courier

WATERLOO — At an age when most men are beginning to stare down retirement, Randy Lewis decided to find out if he was still tough.

Wrestling for the first time since the 1992 Olympic trials, the 49-year-old Lewis, a 1984 Olympic gold medalist, showed he’s pretty tough for a guy who will turn 50 next month, but not quite tough enough to tame all the youngsters in his given sport of freestyle wrestling.

Lewis, a two-time national champion at Iowa, won two matches Saturday at the 2009 Northern Plains Senior and Junior Regional championships at Young Arena before losing in the semifinals to Northern Iowa’s two-time All-American Moza Fay.

“It was fun,” Lewis said. “It was real fun those first two matches. It was fun against Moza. It was a great experience for me. I’m glad I did it.”

Fay, more than a quarter century younger than Lewis, won the 163-pound semifinal, 9-2, 7-0.

“I made a couple of mistakes in that match against Moza and he is too solid for me to give up that much position,” Lewis said. “And once he got on top it was pretty much over.

By DAN McCOOL – dmccool@dmreg.com

Randy Lewis, a 1984 Olympic gold medalist, believes he has one more freestyle wrestling tournament in him.

That tournament is today’s Northern Plains Regional at Young Arena in Waterloo. Lewis, who is 22 days shy of his 50th birthday, will compete at 163 pounds.

“I just want to find out. This is more about my own personal knowledge,” said Lewis, who lives in Iowa City. “I’ve always felt like I have one tournament in me, and I want to wrestle it.

“I’m not doing this to qualify for Council Bluffs, I’m already qualified for Council Bluffs if I wanted to. If I were to win (Northern Plains) and feel good, I’d have to think about it.”

The champions in freestyle today qualify for the World Team trials May 30-31 in Council Bluffs.

Because of his gold medal, Lewis could compete in the world trials without having to qualify through a regional tournament.

Lewis is not the oldest wrestler to compete in a regional or national tournament according to Craig Sesker, communications manager for USA Wrestling. Shaun Scott of Millersville, Pa., was 61 when he competed in Greco-Roman at the National Open last month in Las Vegas.

By J.R. Ogden
The Gazette
jr.ogden@gazettecommunications.com

Randy Lewis is the first to call himself crazy.

“We already knew that,” he said with a laugh. “That’s been documented for a long time.”

Lewis, a two-time NCAA champion wrestler at the University of Iowa, will take the mat today for the first time in 17 years, wrestling at the 2009 Northern Plains Junior-Senior Regional Championships at Young Arena in Waterloo.

The 1984 Olympic gold medalist is 49 years old.

“I’ve thought about this for a long time,” said Lewis, a two-time Olympian and four-time All-American at Iowa in the late 1970s. “But every time I trained, I got hurt.”

His solution? Stop training. It never really helped his wrestling anyway, he said.

“I’m not going to train, other than getting my weight down,” he said. “I’m too old to train … but I think I’m young enough for one tournament.”

Lewis said he feels 49 “when I look in the mirror.”

“I’m just doing this for fun,” he said. “I’m going to put on a show and I’m going to have fun.”

Andy Hamilton • Iowa City Press-Citizen • May 2, 2009

Randy Lewis has talked for years about returning to competition in the sport that made him an Olympic champion.

He figures he might as well do it while he’s still young.

“I’ll be 50 soon,” the former Iowa wrestling great said Friday afternoon. “But I feel like I’m only 47 and a half.”

Lewis hasn’t wrestled in a competitive setting since the 1992 Olympic Trials. He’s 30 years removed from winning his first NCAA title with the Hawkeyes. He’ll turn 50 in June and celebrate the 25th anniversary of winning Olympic gold in August.

But first he plans to compete May 16 in Waterloo at the Northern Plains Regional, a freestyle qualifying tournament for the World Team Trials.

“He’s been talking about coming back and wrestling since the day he retired,” Iowa coach Tom Brands said. “This isn’t the first time, and it’s not going to be the last.”

But Lewis is serious now. He’s thought this through. He has myriad reasons for getting back on the mat — the enjoyment he used to derive from competition, his quest to get down to 163 pounds and shed a few inches from his waistline are a couple — and the lyrics of a Toby Keith tune are speaking to his heart.

The Iowa State athletic director introduced Kevin Jackson as the new Cyclone wrestling coach. Jackson, the current Sunkist youth development program head coach, replaces Cael Sanderson, who left for Penn State April 17th.

Jackson, a former gold medalist and two-time World Champion, captained the 1987 ISU national championship team.

“We are very excited to welcome Kevin back to the Cyclone family,” Pollard said.

Before joining the Sunkist program, Jackson spent eight years as the USA wrestling national freestyle coach and took two teams to the Olympics. Jackson coached Sanderson on the freestyle team, where the former ISU coach won a 2004 gold medal. Jackson also coached Henry Cejudo, who won a gold medal in 2008.

Jackson’s freestyle team won the 2001 World Cup. In 2003, USA placed second and finished third in 2006. And before meeting with the media, Jackson already started announcing his plans to keep the Cyclones, who have finished fifth or better in the last three NCAA Championships, in the national elite.

“There is no ceiling to what we can accomplish on and off the mat at Iowa State and I couldn’t be more excited to get started,” Jackson said. “I’m pleased to inherit such an outstanding team and we’ll begin immediately to focus on hard work and technique with the goal of competing for the NCAA title.”

By Gary Mihoces, USA TODAY
Northwestern’s Jake Herbert, named Tuesday as the 2009 winner of the Hodge Trophy as the nation’s top college wrestler, didn’t celebrate with a day of rest.
Instead, he was training for the U.S. freestyle wrestling championships, a step toward his goal of becoming a 2012 Olympian.

Herbert plans to compete April 11 in Las Vegas at freestyle nationals, a qualifier for the world team trials May 30-31 in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The freestyle world championships will be held in September in Denmark.

“My immediate goal is to go win nationals and win the world team trials. If you’re not training to win a tournament, why even enter it?” Herbert said after a workout in Naperville, Ill., at the Overtime School of Wrestling, where he is now a staff member.

As a Northwestern junior, Herbert won the 2007 NCAA championship at 184 pounds, going 32-0. He took a year off from college wrestling in 2008 in an unsuccessful try to make the Olympics.

In his return to college wrestling, Herbert recently completed a 34-0 season and won another NCAA title at 184. He did not allow a takedown all season.