Head coach Cael Sanderson joins Penn State's Coaches Caravan this week, beginning with a stop this morning in Philadelpha. Sanderson briefly addressed the media before the event, and I wanted to quickly pass along his comments.
For the most part it's pretty general stuff, other than further confirming that Nico Megaludis is set to wrestle his fifth and final year at Penn State. I hope to catch up with Sanderson again before this evening's Langhorne stop.
On the off-season...
"The off-season has been good," Sanderson said. "In wrestling we go right from the college season into freestyle. We have our senior level guys and obviously our younger kids wrestling freestyle. Things are going good. The room is full everyday, which is good to see. Obviously (the coaches) can't have anything to do with that. We just show up and the guys are there and are at practice at the college level, but things are going good. We're excited. The guys are excited about next year. We've got a group of young kids who will be stepping in as redshirt freshmen next year that bring a lot of passion and fire. We're going to have Nico back and we're going to have Zain Retherford back. There's a lot of energy in the room right now."
On the U.S. Freestyle Open earlier this month...
"We were happy about winning the cup. We have a real strong regional training center, and that's a big deal to us. But overall I thought the guys wrestled well. David Taylor won, (Anthony) Cassar won the junior field which is a different age group (than Jake Varner). Zain looked great. I think he made some progress on his opponent, which is good to see. (Jason) Nolf, that was his first freestyle tournament of his life and that was very impressive. He lost by giving up a lot of gut wrenches, headlocks and front headlocks - things that he's not used to worrying about. I think you can see his potential when he does focus on freestyle. He's a guy who can go a long way internationally. But things are going well. The World Team Trials are in four weeks, so that is where we're (focused now). That's the tournament that is real important. The nationals will get you there, but to make a world team and make the national team you have to perform at the World Team Trials."
For the most part it's pretty general stuff, other than further confirming that Nico Megaludis is set to wrestle his fifth and final year at Penn State. I hope to catch up with Sanderson again before this evening's Langhorne stop.
On the off-season...
"The off-season has been good," Sanderson said. "In wrestling we go right from the college season into freestyle. We have our senior level guys and obviously our younger kids wrestling freestyle. Things are going good. The room is full everyday, which is good to see. Obviously (the coaches) can't have anything to do with that. We just show up and the guys are there and are at practice at the college level, but things are going good. We're excited. The guys are excited about next year. We've got a group of young kids who will be stepping in as redshirt freshmen next year that bring a lot of passion and fire. We're going to have Nico back and we're going to have Zain Retherford back. There's a lot of energy in the room right now."
On the U.S. Freestyle Open earlier this month...
"We were happy about winning the cup. We have a real strong regional training center, and that's a big deal to us. But overall I thought the guys wrestled well. David Taylor won, (Anthony) Cassar won the junior field which is a different age group (than Jake Varner). Zain looked great. I think he made some progress on his opponent, which is good to see. (Jason) Nolf, that was his first freestyle tournament of his life and that was very impressive. He lost by giving up a lot of gut wrenches, headlocks and front headlocks - things that he's not used to worrying about. I think you can see his potential when he does focus on freestyle. He's a guy who can go a long way internationally. But things are going well. The World Team Trials are in four weeks, so that is where we're (focused now). That's the tournament that is real important. The nationals will get you there, but to make a world team and make the national team you have to perform at the World Team Trials."
