SENIOR NATIONALS: The Brawlnagels, Rau, Bey, Cathcart

This is the guy Zac will face on Saturday with an OTT on the line.

SENIOR NATIONALS DAY ONE

Kamal Bey didn't have to wrestle because he won a Pan Am Gold and was a World Teamer. He's been waiting in the finals. He'll wrestle Benjamin Peak for the Championship on Saturday. 

Joe Rau won three matches and wrestled his way into the finals. He'll be up against Alan Vera on Saturday. Be sure to wear him out, Joe! Also, it seemed like the refs were allowing quite a bit of defending by the down person in par terre. 

Those guys are in. They've earned a spot in the Olympic Team Trials. 

It looks like Zac and Danny Braunagel and West Cathcart need to win one of their next two matches in the consolation bracket. Danny's path is to beat either RaVaughn Perkins or Aydin Rix McElhinn of Northern Colorado. 

Zac must beat either Terrence Zaleski (who he teched on Friday) or the loser of the John Stefanowicz and Richard Carlson match. Zac beat Carlson earlier in the year to get to Final X. 

West Cathcart must beat either Aden Attao or the likely loser in the other consolation semifinal, Michael Rogers. 

OLYMPIC TEAM TRIALS STATUS

As for the IRTC and IRTC-adjacent wrestlers, I think this is a true short summary of their status vis-a-vis an Olympic Team Trials spot:

 

IN

Joe "The Wraustler" Rau

Kamal Bey (waiting in the finals)

 

MUST WIN ONE OF THEIR NEXT TWO MATCHES:

Zac Braunagel

Danny Braunagel

West Cathcart

 

Danny has the toughest road, followed by West and then Zac. Zac already teched his first matchup earlier today. 

FINALLY, AN AIRING OF GRIEVANCES

1.  Flo and Track, why do you make me click that "Are you still there" link every two minutes? You are the clingy girlfriend who is not worth this much attention. See image below. 

2.  With regard to #1 above, I'm a Flo subscriber, so why is this hurdle in my path? At least in the before times I got to see a stupid Jake Varner youtube video about Defense Soap, but now, what purpose does it serve other than to anger your consumer base? 

3.  The commercials. They still interrupt. I want to see hands raised, celebrations, the coach pumping his fist, etc. By the way, why commercials? 

4.  The cameras were better than the Flo average but still not as good as a birthday party in 1999. 

5.  Whoever manned the scoring table for Mat #6 wasn't trained enough. There was no link to Trackwrestling early on and then later in the day and thus no live scoring. I had to go to the actual camera on FloWrestling to see that there were people wrestling on that mat. Surprise! 

6.  Why force us to toggle back and forth between Track and Flo? The bout board on Flo was useless, so I had to go back to Track to see who was wrestling. 

7.  At least during the matches that I watched somebody thoughtful at the table was usually kind enough to turn the camera when the action went off the screen. It didn't happen enough, mind you, but it was better than usual. 

8.  In the list of events on Track, you have to go to page two and then a quarter of the way down the page to find Senior Nationals. Seriously, that's insane. On the first page of events, you have a Triangular, a Middle School conference tournament, two JV "mixers," four JV invites, a JV tournament, and a JV Open. There's also a Jamboree. What the **** is a  "Jamboree"? No, don't tell me. I don't want to know. You're all going to jail for that! We have to scroll through all of this stuff. Put an obvious link to the big events on the front page. This is so freaking obvious I laugh. Is there somebody at Flo sitting in a big leather chair petting a cat and chuckling evilly while thinking about the confusion this causes? "Chaos! I love CHAOS!" 

9.  Are you hiring?