Yesterday Joey Prata made his official announcement, committing to VT during a visit to tech.
https://twitter.com/prata_jay97/status/652255527863472128
Prata is the heir apparent to Joey Dance, and will line up perfectly to take over the 125 lb lineup slot after a redshirt year. Welcome to HokieNation Joey!
Forums:
DISCLAIMER: Forum topics may not have been written or edited by The Key Play staff.
Comments
Man you always have the inside scoop on Virginia Tech wrestling recruiting, hokiesports is always slow. Do you use flowrestling? Intermat? Or something else?
Pretty much sources from all over. Once you get involved, you kind of learn who may be a hokies lean. For our commitments, Josh Lowe (Intermat) and Christian Pyles (Flowrestling) are plugged into the VT beat pretty well:
https://twitter.com/JoshMLowe
https://twitter.com/cpyles8
Prata has been a heavy VT lean for the past two years. In the summer of 2013 he was a Cadet Greco-Roman National Champ (Very Big deal). He took a huge step forward this summer at Fargo, which is basically wrestlings equivalent of junior year football camps. I imagine after 4th place nationally in freestyle this past summer, he got the right offer from VT and it was a good fit after that.
VT really excels in that it hosts the prep camp for Team VA before the freestyle and greco cadet and junior national meet. Dresser gets to watch pretty much every talented 8th to 11th grader in the state of VA.
Am I mistaken, or is this at least the 2nd national champion we've had commit to VT this recruiting cycle?
I think its safe to say that our wrestling program is making a very serious push to be the first program in our Athletic Department's history to win a team national championship.
2 National champs, but a year apart. Prata is 2016 cycle and Adams is 2017 cycle. Dresser's doing his thing, and fall practice officially begins tomorrow
Delete.
Don't worry, I'm with you, I'd like a team national championship for the hokies sooner rather than later
HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN ABOUT BASS FISHING YOU GNAVE!?!?
I'd like to see VT win a national championship in SOMETHING, and I'm not thinking it's our year in football.
Women's soccer is Top 10 and doing their thing as well. Don't be surprised if they make a run in the NCAA tournament again this year.
Agree, think Women's soccer may actually be a step ahead of wrestling due to the strength of the ACC. Both programs are performing at an incredibly high level consistently
Wrestling had an outside chance last year but didn't perform at the NCAA. The ceiling of the team this year might be a bit lower but I expect them to do at least as well or better in the NCAA.
Indeed, though we did score 56 team points, which was 7 points better than 2014 when we finished 8th. Last year was just a really tough year. This year, i dont think we can catch either of the top 2 teams Okie St and Penn St. With a fantastic weekend, I think Iowa and Michigan are in striking distance. And i think OSU and Cornell have a lot of roster shifting and we could also catch them.
7th is probably a good preseason guess as to finish, but its conceivable we could make 3rd.
They downed Wake Forest yesterday 3-1. Big game at Clemson on Sunday, be nice to get a top 10 win
We already did in bass fishing.
iirc, it wasnt an official NCAA title
I suppose I'd like to see an NCAA championship added to that.
EDIT: HA, you beat me to it...
Want.
Make sure you give Whit a shoutout sometime for the work Wrestling does. Helps justify wrestling budgets.
I actually just sent an email thanking Whit for the job he's done across the board in the athletic department including the wrestling program. He sent me an email back and was very appreciative of having someone reach out.
Great! Can you e-mail him again and just casually mention Tom Herman. Don't suggest anything crazy like "FIRE FRANK BEAMER" but, you know, when the time comes, which will be in the next 5 years, probably, Tom Herman is a really cool guy....or something.
kthnxbye
Hit me right back on twitter too just a minute ago. Babcock's really accessible and loves to hear from Olympic sports fans.
Damn, wrestling is killing it. National championship here we come! Welcome to Hokie Nation Joey!
But what about Rowdy, Rowdy Piper and the the Hulkster?
Fricking sweet! Dresser has been phenomenal and I can only hope he finds Blacksburg appealing enough to make it his career home.
Reading between the lines, so long as the support for wrestling remains strong, only the Iowa job could tempt him away. Keeping Robie and Hoffman will be much much harder
Wonder if Sam Rogers ever considered wrestling?
The repair cost for the floors became to much.