CONGRATULATIONS ILLINI RECRUITS!

I am now filled with so much bloody ILLINI and ILLINOIS pride, I could pick up the Earth and move it a thousand miles. Great IHSA tournament, great effort from the recruits, love the new ILLINOIS Matmen trophies for most dominant, beautiful stories, wonderful event, let's keep this train rolling! WOOOOO!  

Look at this:

I have watched the wrestling community go into its shell because of the Covid, and this was a kind of coming out party. A reawakening. This is what we do. These are the things we love. This is what we want. 

And we can have it all. 

Hat tip to Mario!

Remember the "Rumble on the Rooftop," when the IRTC showed the national wrestling community how to keep wrestling strong during the Covid? 

I was so proud of that. 

The first into the breach. It has been hard, and we're not done yet, but I love the light at the end of the tunnel. It's a beautiful light. 

Kole Brower proved to be everything we had hoped for and more! He's now a two-time State Champion, and he did it in style. Huff Hall wrote this in a comment to a previous post: "Kole Brower is fun to watch, strong in any position and always on the offense, he's got points on the brain." That's special praise coming from Huff.

Kole executed almost every possible kind of takedown in this tournament. And the thing that I've always been most impressed with him--his mat wrestling--was also on display. Being able (and not afraid) to take people down and then hold them there are skills that he will be able to put to use as an ILLINI. 

The thing about Will Baysingar is that he has another year to win State Championship #2. That will be another year to grow, get stronger and to get even better at wrestling. He jumped two weight classes from his championship last year, and his mighty Vision Quest came up just short. 

His other loss this year was to Kannon Webster. I've been trying to find video of that because it might turn out to be similar to the video below, which shows two ILLINI warriors, Eric Siebert versus Ernest Benion, getting after it in high school before they each won a National Championship at ILLINOIS. They also won the ILLINI Dike Eddleman Award for Athlete of the Year in back-to-back seasons. 

If you have video of the Kannon/Baysingar match, please let me know! 

The number one rule in all of wrestling: 1. Don't go upper body against a kid from ILLINOIS. The number two rule is: 2. Especially not a Rachal. 

Ghee lost to the #1 seed in the State Final by the score of 2-3. That was a guy who was pinning everybody in seconds. He realized, though, that you have to be very careful on a wrestling mat against a Rachal.