STATE CHAMPS AND ILLINI CAMPS

Is wrestling season over? Trick question. The 2022-2023 wrestling season is over, but the 2023-2024 wrestling season has just begun. During the last two weeks, The ILLINI Wrestling Blog and Forum and Beyond has been watching all of the University of ILLINOIS wrestlers in their B1G and NCAA matches and documenting what happened and previewing what would happen next. That's kept us busy.

And we missed a lot. 

In this post, we play catch up with Orange and Blue recruits, ILLINI wrestling camps, and general University of ILLINOIS wrestling stuff. Our team at the IWB&F&B has scoured the internet looking for stories about ILLINI wrestling, and I'm sure that this post is incomplete. 

And that pisses us off. 

If you have a story about an ILLINI wrestler, coach, recruit, or a former ILLINI wrestler, please send us a message. You can DM on Twitter or Instagram or send an email to thetortmaster@yahoo.com. Let's start with ILLINI recruits in their state series. 


BRANDON MORVARI


The ILLINI will welcome Brandon Morvari this season. He's now a two-time State Champion for powerhouse Simley High School in Minnesota. They say that recruiting 125 and 285 are the hardest, and ILLINOIS got a great one here. 






Our team searched the internet for video of his championship match but couldn't find anything. So, instead, here's Brandon Morvari winning the 45-pound bracket in the Pony Stampede tournament ten years ago. Pay special attention to his enthusiastic covers of the bottom man, like at 3:51. 




Somebody save this video for the jumbotron when Brandon is wrestling for an NCAA title. 



RYAN BENNETT

The Junior from powerhouse St. Edward in Ohio became a State Finalist. He has already won a State Championship and will have next year to add to his collection. I believe he was also the leading point-getter on the team that won the state title. Here he is:




And more Ryan Bennett goodness:





ACADEMIC PROGRESS & NIL

That kind of sweet academic achievement by Ryan Bennett reminds me of the following: Stay on track on your University of ILLINOIS educational path, and you will be awarded $5,980.00 per year from the school. (1) Read book. (2) Write down what you read. (3) Profit! Then, there are all kinds of NIL opportunities, and the newest one is ICON:





And you can tell they mean business when they put out the large tweet:




ILLINI WRESTLING CAMPS

Do you want to learn from the best? Coaches Poeta, Ruth, Hunter, IMAR and Kanzler with some help from Russia on the freestyle side, then you've got Greco with Coach Medlin, Coach Bisek, Max Nowry, Joe Rau and the Brawlnagel, among others: 






ILLINI COACH JIM HEFFERNAN

The Ohio Wrestling Hall of Fame came calling on Coach Jim Heffernan. He's already in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. Coach Hef coached 70 All-Americans and 215 NCAA qualifiers during his career with the Illini, including 11 National Champions. 






WILLIAM BAYSINGAR

The ILLINI Wrestling Blog and Forum and Beyond had a nice little mantle to place our trophies, ribbons and medals. I imagine ILLINI recruits like Will Baysingar need to rent special Trophy Storage Units:



CHRIS MOORE

Then there's Chris Moore, who probably has to store all his newspaper clippings in the cloud. (Haha! I just realized the young ones might not know what "newspaper clippings" are!). 





Every week is Chris Moore week in McHenry County:





KANNON WEBSTER

Here we have Kannon Webster and Wyatt Medlin enjoying the show. They will be down there soon enough!






LOGAN SWAW

Logan got to wrestle in an ILLINOIS versus Indiana All Star meet, and he was the focus of one of my favorite pictures. I love this photograph of IMAR and ILLINI recruits Logan Swaw and Chris Moore for a literal ton of reasons, but notice that IMAR is going with double underhooks here:





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