I’ve seen good wrestling matches in the past, but this kid is the champ. Check out his amazing move that gets him the pin!

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Agile Wrestler Kicks Ass

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WOW!

By Tom Archdeacon

LONDON, Ohio — On what so far was the biggest day of his high school life, Dustin Carter woke up with the flu and all the diarrhea and dehydration that comes with it.

Worried about the consequences (he was wrestling in the 103-pound weight class of the South Central Ohio League tournament), the Hillsboro High senior captain found a bottle of Imodium in the medicine chest, didn’t read the warnings and wolfed down three times the prescribed dosage.

That cured one problem, but left him with a severe stomach ache.

Then there were the nerves when he got to the meet at Madison Plains High School on Saturday morning.

Even so, he handled his first two opponents, then slipped into the dressing room for a quick “power nap” as he called it.

As he bounced around the mat before meeting Miami Trace’s Keaton Webb in the final, he said he felt fine and had “no problems.”

Well, unless you count having no legs, no hands and no forearms.

Then again, to Carter that isn’t a problem.

“Instead of obstacles, he sees opportunities,” said Hillsboro High principal Rick Early. “Where somebody else sees a setback, he finds a way for success.”

John Huckaby

Imagine if Robert Montgomery Knight would have been a wrestling coach.

Think about the quotes we would have enjoyed.

Love him or hate him, there’s no doubt Knight, who resigned as head basketball coach at Texas Tech, filled many a reporter’s notebook with quotes that gave life to the sports page and to basketball.

Wrestling doesn’t have many of those quote machines. Heck, wrestling at times is happy to get any quote in the newspaper whether it’s coach speak or a legitimately interesting quote.

There are a couple of coaches today in the upper reaches of college wrestling who provide some enjoyable quotes.

Tom Brands, the coach at Iowa, is usually good for a good one.

Take this one, at an Iowa media day, “The challenge is the same every year. The battle is instate. The battle is the Big 10 Conference. The battle is national. The battle is planet Earth. And if they find life out there, then the battle will be universal.”

A little spacey perhaps but a good quote.

And about his superstitions, “Nothing that’s overboard, but you probably wouldn’t want to live in my head for a day. There’s a lot that goes through that coconut.”

by Catherine Guiles

Thirty-five years after creating the nonscholarship Division III, the National Collegiate Athletic Association is surveying division members about adding a fourth division, citing rapid growth and policy disputes.

But athletic directors at several Chicago area Division III colleges say the proposal is unnecessary.

“Our position has been to retain Division III identity and framework,” said Tony Ladd, athletic director at Wheaton College. “The more institutions involved in Division III, the better it is for us institutionally.”

The NCAA mailed surveys this month to the more than 440 members of Division III. Each is asked to give one official response based on meetings with administrators, athletics staff, student-athletes and others. The surveys are due in March, and the Division III “working group,” which has recommended a fourth division, will review the results.

“It’s really an attempt to ask, ‘Will our current structure be the best way to accommodate growth?’” said Dan Dutcher, the NCAA’s vice president for Division III. “Ultimately the membership is going to determine that.”

Division III, the NCAA’s largest, could contain nearly 480 schools by 2020, officials said. Division I has approximately 340 members, while Division II has approximately 290.

BY DAN McCOOL

In college athletic department offices across America, the coach behind the door belongs to a group that averages nearly $70,000 in base salary each year.

Down many of those hallways, though, other coaches cash bigger paychecks than their colleagues in the Olympic sport of wrestling.

A Des Moines Register open-records request for salaries of Division I wrestling head coaches shows that the average base salary at 51 of the 61 public programs in the U.S. that responded - about $69,550 - places those coaches somewhere between the average nurse and a psychologist.

Wrestling coaches, who arguably practice a bit of both of those other professions, say they stay at the side of the mat because of a deep commitment to the sport - not a shot at deep pockets. Others, however, contend that the college athletic pay scale tips too far toward revenue-producing giants such as football and men’s basketball.

“Wrestling has been under-funded, under-promoted and under-everything you can say about a program throughout the country,” said former Iowa State coach Bobby Douglas, now an assistant athletic director at the school. “From a size perspective, the sports that are getting compensated all have athletes that are over 6 feet and 200 pounds.

By Guy Cipriano

SPRING MILLS — He had many things to learn about this sport they called wrestling.

CDT photo/Christopher Weddle

Armando Abraham never heard of Pennsylvania, much less the sport of wrestling, when he came to Penns Valley as an exchange student from Venezuela last fall. Abraham has wrestled a variety of weights for the Rams.

“I didn’t know anything,” Penns Valley senior Armando Abraham said.

By anything, Abraham meant basic techniques, the moves Centre County

wrestlers learn before they reach middle school.

“What was a sprawl?” Abraham asked rhetorically inside Penns Valley’s locker room last week. “What was take a shot? What was a single-leg?”

Abraham wasn’t starting from his base — another term he added to his expanding vocabulary this winter. He was starting from a flat position. But Abraham refused to stay flat.

He placed his soul into a sport they don’t offer in his home country of Venezuela.

He ended the regular season with three wins, a number that may have been higher if the 152-pounder didn’t spend most of the season at 160 or 171 to fill a team hole.

Wrestler has lost just 1 match this year in pursuit of a dream

BY JOHN ERARDI

Today, Dustin Carter opens his pursuit of “making state,” as he wrestles in the sectional tournament at Chillicothe.

His favorite thing about that? His entire Hillsboro High School team will be wrestling, too. He’s the team captain, just one of the guys.

Carter and seniors Oney Snyder and Greg Rhoads ride herd on the team. The three are very close. Next year, they’ll each be wrestling in college.

“That’s pretty amazing in itself - three wrestlers from Hillsboro going on to wrestle at the next level,” says Carter - the most amazing story of them all.

Carter sees himself as just another senior wrestler with a dream. But he’s different.

He doesn’t have arms or legs. They had to be amputated when he was 5 years old to save him from a rare blood infection.

Carter is already the talk of the state. Many people want to see him make it to Columbus.

“Every eye in the gym watches his matches, no matter who they’re there to see,” Hillsboro High School principal Rick Earley says.

By Guy Cipriano

The crowd clapped and pounded every inch of Rec Hall with a minute remaining.

Considering the wrestler on the mat, a rhythmic cheer seemed fitting.

Penn State freshman 141- pounder Garrett Scott glided around the circle with Michigan’s Kellen Russell, jockeying for position in a one-point bout.

Scott’s moves resembled the claps — every one featured a purpose.

Scott prevented Russell from recording a takedown during that final minute to earn the biggest win of his young college career.

Triumphs such as the 4-3 victory over the fourth-ranked Russell are what many envisioned when Scott committed to Penn State in 2005. The win helped the Nittany Lions defeat Michigan 20-14.
In some ways, Scott (14-3) has arrived on schedule. In some ways, Scott has arrived later than expected.

He’s only two years removed from his high school career.

But his high school career wasn’t like many others.

He won three PIAA Class AA titles at Juniata Valley. He would have likely claimed a fourth if a violation of his charter school’s Internet use policy didn’t prevent him from participating in the state tournament as a senior.

By Bill Moushey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Andy Starnes/Post-Gazette
Coach J.O. Stright, left, talks with former Yough High School player Ben McCauley during a J.O.T.S practice at Duquesne University in May 2006.

As a coach and general manager of Pittsburgh J.O.T.S. AAU team, one of the leading amateur high school summer basketball squads for 20 years, J.O. Stright has seen transfer issues surrounding many top-notch athletes across the state, becoming personally involved in a few of them.

His answer to the festering problems regarding transfers for material athletic intent is simple: End all transfer rules.

“They don’t work. It’s a joke. It doesn’t make any sense,” he said of the arbitrary nature of the transfer rules — past and future — which he complains rarely get to the truth.

He said there is no doubt that, over the years, students have tried to transfer to follow good coaches and join the best teams, but to his view, just as many moves — star athlete or not — are made because of horrible family situations that force transfers or threaten the well-being of a child.

By ERIC WILSON
Published: November 17, 2005

WALL paintings in Egyptian tombs depict wrestlers competing in crude loincloths that drooped to their knees. Greek antiquities show that when wrestling was introduced to the Olympic Games in 708 B.C., participants competed in the buff. In the 1980’s, the glory days of WrestleMania, Hulk Hogan accessorized his banana-colored bikini with matching wristlets when challenging Andre the Giant, he of the chronic wedgie.

Corbis

Mario Mercado says wrestlers, who have for decades worn one-piece uniforms need to update their look.

Forum: Fashion and Style

M. Scott Brauer for The New York Times

The wrestlers Karem Gaber, left, and Gregor Gracie practicing in two-piece uniforms.

Yet to the casual observer these costumes, or the lack thereof, are less humiliating than the wrestling uniforms that adolescent and collegiate competitors have endured for the last century. From the high-waisted tights of the 1920’s to the three-piece tank, stirrup tights and shorts combo of the 50’s to the modern-day singlet mandated by athletic organizations for at least four decades - basically an oversize jockstrap with suspenders - they may be the most mocked athletic uniform in existence, but they are part of a sport that above all values tradition.