by Andrew Simon

It’s time for the interview to begin, but Jake Herbert isn’t quite done with his workout. So in between every few questions, he fits in sets of dips and pulls, working out his arms, shoulders and back.

What makes you good?

“A lot of hard work…”

How hard do you work?

“I make it a lifestyle…”

Can anybody beat you?

“Not when I wrestle my best. When I do that, the only person that can beat me is myself.”

For Herbert, the workout is never quite done. When you’re an All-American, ranked second in your weight class, riding a 28-match winning streak and striving for a national title, it can’t be.

“I feel like I’ve outworked everyone at my weight class (174 pounds),” Herbert said. “There are not many as driven as me. I fucking hate losing, and you have to have that attitude.

“When I wrestle I know the other kid out there on the mat hasn’t worked as hard as me and made the sacrifices I’ve made. I’m insulted he thinks he can beat me.”

By Andy Hamilton
Iowa City Press-Citizen

The Iowa wrestling room had cleared out after Tuesday afternoon’s practice when Matt Fields started his solitary road to recovery wearing a brace over his injured right knee.

The show goes on for the Hawkeyes. The rehabilitation starts alone for their sophomore heavyweight.

Multiple examinations during the past two days confirmed what Fields and the Hawkeyes feared Sunday: His season is over. Fields tore the anterior cruciate ligament, the medial collateral ligament and sustained a bone bruise in his knee when his foot got caught in the mat as Minnesota’s Cole Konrad tried finishing a shot.

“I didn’t know what ligament it was, but I knew it was something major,” Fields said. “I heard it pop, it was pretty loud and (Konrad) heard it, too. The trainers saw it happen. Everybody knew it was something serious.”

The significance of the injury hit Fields when he thought about how quickly half of his promising collegiate career has passed. He has two years of eligibility remaining, plus a redshirt year available.

Ryan Fuller takes over heavyweight as Matt Fields goes out with an injury.

By DAN McCOOL
REGISTER STAFF WRITER

Iowa wrestling coach Jim Zalesky is thankful that heavyweight Ryan Fuller did not transfer to another school at the semester break this season.

“Anybody who’s in a backup situation has always got to be prepared to step in,” Zalesky said.

With sixth-ranked Matt Fields lost for the season due to a knee injury sustained in Sunday’s 25-9 loss at top-ranked Minnesota, Fuller once again is Iowa’s varsity big man.

“Fuller hasn’t had a lot of experience this year or last year, but he’s got capabilities,” Zalesky said. “He’s got the opportunity, he’s got to run with it.

“I don’t think there is that big of a drop-off, maybe he has different skills than Fields has, but he’s been in with a lot of situations, fought a lot of tough matches and wrestled a lot of those top guys.”

Zalesky said an MRI on Fields’ knee showed tears of the anterior cruciate and the medial collateral ligaments. Zalesky said Fields was seeing a second doctor Tuesday to make sure there was no more damage.

USA All-Star Team Line-up for the 32nd Annual Dapper Dan Wrestling Classic
Pittsburgh, PA – January 22, 2006 – The Wrestling Classic committee selected the USA All-Star Team for the Dapper Dan Wrestling Classic, the most prestigious high school all-star wrestling meet in the United States. The Wrestling Classic will be on Sunday, March 26, 2006, at the University of Pittsburgh’s Fitzgerald Field House.
This year, Delaware has been selected as the guest state team to compete against the Western Pennsylvania All-Stars in the preliminary dual meet beginning at 2:00 p.m. The feature match, between the Pennsylvania and USA All-Stars is at 4:00 p.m. Representing the USA Team is:

USA TEAM

Name High School State Record State Champion College Signed with

112 Mark Kist Eagle Grove Iowa 108-8 2 X Iowa State University

119 Ben Ashmore Bishop Lynch Texas 186-5 3 X Oklahoma State University

125 Henry Cejudo Coronado Colorado 126-2 3 X

130 Jordan Frishkorn Great Bridge Virginia 151-13 2 X Oklahoma State University

135 Lance Thompson Stillwater Oklahoma 94-11 2 X Oklahoma State University

140 Curtis Salazar Valley Nebraska 115-6 2 X Univ. of Nebraska-Lincoln

Wrestling, when done by the rules at the high school, college and Olympic levels, is as grueling a sport as you will see anywhere.

While covering Bainbridge High School Bearcats wrestling the past several years, I have witnessed first hand how totally exhausted wrestlers are following a match.

Coach Roy Mathews has built a strong wrestling program at BHS. His 2005-06 team is strong in virtually every class and every weight division.

The team leader is Ricky Sheppard, a senior wrestling in the 189-pound division. He has been dominant, winning the majority of his matches by pin.

Senior leadership is also being provided by 130-pound division wrestler Lester Haire and 215-pound division wrestler Cameron Jones.

Senior leadership is extremely important in any sport, but it is probably even a little more important in a grueling sport like wrestling.

While Sheppard, Haire and Jones are veterans, there are probably more freshmen and sophomores on this season’s team than on any other team in recent memory. In fact, there are more freshmen and sophomores than upperclassmen on the team.

Top freshmen, who have won consistently all season, include 103-pound division competitor Hunter Bulger, 145-pound division competitor Gustavo Estala, 160-pound division competitor Jacory Miller, and 275-pound division competitor Ben Reynolds.

By Clark Ruhland The Collegiate Times
Blacksburg, VA (CSTV U-WIRE) — The Virginia Tech wrestling team dropped its 11th match of the season with a 38-10 loss to the Ohio State University in Cassell Coliseum on Sunday evening.

The Hokies (0-11) were led by tenth-ranked Mike Faust and his 18-9 victory in the 285-lb weight class. Faust, a redshirt senior and management major, recorded eight takedowns on the Buckeyes’ Josh Bartholomew.

“I was more offensive for this match,” Faust said. “A lot of times in the past, I was content on winning matches 3-2 or 4-2 and just win. This match I won by nine, and when I wrestle the top guys in the country, I’ll be ready.”

The Hokies forfeited two of the 10 matches, leading to eight team losses. Nevertheless, Tech head coach Tom Brands was upbeat when asked about the rest of the season.

“What are we, 0-and-11?” Brands asked an official after the match. “From a win-loss point of view, we’re catching people’s eyes in a negative way. We are making progress this season and making guys believe in themselves more now.”

Budd emerges on national scene after beating No. 1 grappler
JUSTIN HAAG - Staff Writer

Above the doorway to the UB wrestling room, in the catacombs of Alumni Arena, hangs a blue and white sign with a stern warning.

“Do not enter this room unless you are mentally and physically prepared to pay the price it takes to get to the NCAA tournament, be an All-American and win a National Championship.”

At 133 pounds, junior captain Mark Budd is pushing the limits to make this goal a reality. With his recent victory over the nation’s No. 1-ranked Shawn Bunch from Edinboro University, Budd has not only skyrocketed into the national rankings, but he also became the first Bulls grappler to take down a No. 1-ranked competitor.

Budd defeated Bunch on Dec. 9 in the Erie Civic Center. With three prior career losses to Bunch and trailing going into the final period, most people would have expected a loss, but not Budd. Taking the 2005 national runner-up into overtime, Budd relied on his conditioning.

“I thought he was getting tired,” Budd said in a press release after the match. “I figured I was in better condition than him. I thought that was the change, really.”

Sophomore coping with unfavorable match-ups this year

By Robbie Sgro
Staff Reporter

To say sophomore heavyweight Bubba Gritter’s wrestling opponents this season have been difficult is an understatement.

Seven of his losses have come against opponents ranked in the top nine by the National Wrestling Coaches Association.

He has lost to Minnesota’s No. 1 Cole Konrad, Oklahoma State’s No. 2 Steve Mocco, Michigan’s No. 3 Greg Wagner, Oklahoma’s No. 5 Jake Hager and Northwestern’s No. 9 Dustin Fox.

“I had big expectations coming in, but wrestling the kids I did … it’s easier for me to accept that I haven’t been doing what I wanted,” Gritter said.

Close Calls

Lost 3-2 to UNI’s Tyler Rhodes
Lost 3-2 to MSU’ Max Lossen
Lost 4-2 to IU’s Dave Herman
Gritter expected to have a breakout season for the No. 6 wrestling team. He was 23-7 and beat eventual All-American Bill Stouffer in the team’s intrasquad meet last season. But Gritter said his 14-12 record and No. 16 ranking this season is not what he envisioned.

“So far I’m kind of disappointed,” he said.

Gritter said he hopes the stiff competition will have him prepared for the end of the season.

All in the family
For a pair of brothers, the family tradition goes generations back
By matt meltzer

Like most grandfathers would be, Charles Hitschler Jr. was thrilled the first time he saw one of his grandsons wrestle at the collegiate level.
But for Hitschler, seeing his grandsons Rob and Colin Hitschler put on Penn singlets for the first time was especially gratifiying.

Rob and Colin, a junior and a freshman respectively, are the third generation of Hitschlers to wrestle at Penn and the fifth generation to matriculate to the University.

The Hitschler family tree is littered with Penn graduates. Rob and Colin’s great-great-grandfather began the trend when he graduated from Penn’s medical school.

For the brothers, the decision to wrestle at Penn was not necessarily an easy one, but it was certainly made less difficult given their extensive family connections to the school. They had both been traveling to watch Penn wrestling from a very young age.

“We traveled around to watch when I was six or seven and every year since then,” Rob said.

By Andy Hamilton
Iowa City Press-Citizen

Misfortune has taken down Matt Fields again.

The latest hardship for the hard-luck Hawkeye was what the Iowa wrestling team feared most Sunday when it boarded the bus home from Minnesota – its heavyweight’s sophomore season is finished.

Initial tests indicated that Fields tore two ligaments in his left knee Sunday against top-ranked Cole Konrad and will likely require reconstructive surgery.

Iowa coach Jim Zalesky said Fields heard something in his knee pop and when Konrad shot toward the leg and Fields’ foot stuck in the mat.

“(Iowa trainer Matt) Doyle thinks it’s his MCL and ACL,” Zalesky said. “We’re not 100-percent sure. We’re going to go in today (for an MRI), but that’s what it looks like. It’s the same thing (former Iowa NCAA champion) Cliff Moore did (in the summer of 2001).”

Fields was 15-6 and ranked sixth in a year in which his mat time had already had cut short by another injury.

After finishing one victory shy of earning All-America honors last year as a true freshman, Fields underwent hip surgery in April. The operation gave him more flexibility with his lower body, but kept him on crutches and off the mat for much of the offseason.