Edit: Moved to the front because I know nothing about wrestling.
In his fifth season as the Hokies head wrestling coach, Coach Kevin Dresser picked up what he called the biggest win in the history of the Virginia Tech wrestling program. In just five years he has put the Hokies wrestling team on the map and he is now competing with the ELITE, yes I said ELITE, wrestling programs in the country.
The Hokies competed in the NWCA/Cliff Keen National Duals this past weekend. They entered the tournament ranked 12th in the country and seeded seventh in the tournament. In their first match at the Duals, the Hokies breezed through Central Michigan beating the Chippewas 30-10. The second match of the Duals was against #2 ranked Oklahoma State. Christiansburg native and the 174-pound wrestle for the Hokies, Matt Epperly led the Hokies to victory with a second period pin over Mike Benefiel to pick up three extra bonus points and vault the Hokies ahead of the Cowboys with an 18-16 win, and into the semifinals. Here the Hokies avenged the 10 point loss that they took against #4 ranked Wisconsin during the ACC Challenge. This time the Hokies edged out a one-point victory and advanced to the tournament finals. It was in the finals that the Hokies took their lone loss on the weekend, to finish second behind #1 ranked Cornell.
After the huge weekend Virginia Tech had, the Hokies have put themselves on the national map and are showing that they will be a force to be dealt with in the coming years. NCAA.com was also impressed with the showing the Hokies had at the duals and said (in this article http://www.ncaa.com/news/wrestling/2011-01-10/virginia-tech-turns-heads-...) that we may see the Hokies vault all of the way from #12 to #3 in the NWCA/USA Today rankings that will be released later this week.
I feel that all successful Hokies sports teams have a place for recognition; and what better place to do it than here, at The Key Play? While wrestling is not a very popular sport and not many people know a lot about it, it happens to be 'my area of expertise,' so to say. We are all Hokies alike and I feel that an up and coming and very successful Hokies squad should be recognized, because if anyone loves the Hokies, it is all of the people who frequent this site. I want to once again say congratulations to Coach Dresser and the Hokies wrestling team for turning heads at the National Duals and putting Virginia Tech on national map in yet another sport.
Comments
Excellent Read
I was oblivious to everything that happened regarding coach Brands going to Iowa and stealing our recruits. It seems like we've rebounded nicely. When do the NCAA's for wrestling take place?
Thanks for the work, feel free to keep them coming.
NCAAs
The ACC Championships are on March 5th in Charlottesville and NCAAs will be held March 17th-19th in Philly. Tech is easily the favorite to win ACCs and is a longshot to win the NCAAs. Wrestling is a weird sport though and if there are some early upsets to Cornell's wrestlers we will have a shot at a National Championship.
A little back ground on Coach Dresser, he was a longtime high school wrestling coach in Virginia and amassed 13 state titles at two separate schools after leaving his graduate assistant coaching position under wrestling great Dan Gable at Iowa. Coach Dresser had Christiansburg High School, the team he left to come coach at Virginia Tech, ranked as high as fourth in the country, and if you do not know this is unheard of for a public school. He has rebuilt the Hokies from almost nothing to a national contender in just five years.
My personal prediction when Dresser took the job as the Hokies head coach was that it would take him ten years to get a national title for Virginia Tech's wrestling program. It may be a bit of a stretch this year, but we definitely have a shot and he is doing it in half of the time I thought he would. I was good friends with a wrestler from Dresser's former high school, Christiansburg, he said that Dresser is not only a good coach, but a great recruiter and that he could sell salt to a slug. So, moral of the story, he gets the top talent and the coaches them into Champions.
Philly huh, I may try to make it up to the NCAAs.
The one thing I know about wrestling is that Dan Gable is the man, I'm glad we have someone from his tree leading us.
Also
Can we watch these guys on TV at all?
TV
As wrestling is a sport growing in popularity, it is still not the most popular sport. I know the Big Ten network broadcasts their schools' matches, but I have never watched Virginia Tech, specifically, on television. The ESPN family of networks has broadcast NCAAs the past four or five years, so look for the Championships on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3.com, and ESPNU. It is ashame that the Hokies cannot get more national exposure via television, but I feel with the growing popularity of wrestling, that this day may be in the near future.
Also check out the front page of HokieSports.com. The Hokies wrestling programs headlines the homepage. That is awesome for the Hokies wrestling program and for the sport of wrestling in general.