Closing remarks from a “fun” road trip regular season close out until the post season... so if you’ve been bored with my past musings.... I will pause for you to now hit the back button and skip this...... ok, if you’ve stuck thru you must be a glutton for more boring, inane prose... so here it goes:
1. I closed out this season’s regular-season road trips with a visit to U of Minnesota’s Maturi Pavilion. Now I did not think this was a new venue for me since I was here for the B1G tournament last year... or so I thought, but I quickly surprised myself in trying to figure out what happened to the other two sides of seating around the mat... it was then that a local sitting next to me informed me the B1Gs were in “The Barn”. It’s moments like this that I realize early retirement might not have been too early after all!
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(But in my own defense... both are in the same dang building and I entered the same dang door... I just didn’t know the difference between a turn to the right and a turn to the left...
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)
2. The crowd was a bit subdued and did not look to be the sellout that it was on paper... but starting out with a 6-0 FF, then Energizer Bunny Roman making it 11-0, and the “feature match” Gopher getting stuck to the mat for 17-0 pretty much took all hope out of the crowd early
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... not to mention the 5-6 inches of snow that came down overnight scared folks away.
3. Now given all that snow, I would have thought that a “snow familiar” state like Minnesota would know how to deal with it... but perhaps because it was a slow, Sunday morning... there were zero snow crews clearing the roads... no exaggeration... I was surprised. But yours truly was not to be deterred, and figuring Uber would never come to get me in those conditions (or not without some outrageous “surge/snow fee”)... I bundled myself up like Ralphie’s brother in the Christmas Story and walked the 1.5 miles through the continuing blizzard conditions, uphill both ways (actually it was really flat), to get to the Pavilion! What fan dedication!
4. So, it’s a wrestling board, enough about the weather... only real good “inside the arena” stories not seen on TV involved my perfectly positioned seat for me to see directly into the passage way from the mat, under the stands into the locker areas (I assume). First story involves RBY... and the reason I now call him Energizer Bunny... after all that activity on the Mat (that poor kid from Minn, the 3rd period could not end fast enough for him... I one point I thought I saw him thinking about just throwing himself to his back to stop the craziness), but after Roman expended all that energy... I look over in the tunnel... light from the back hallway creating an RBY silhouette, and he is doing jumping jacks, burpees, push ups, well into the 141 match and not just warm down speed, but full speed. I’m telling you fellow fans, Roman can taste the top of that podium in March... and he’s giving it his all even off the mat!
5. Next was Verk... if you had any doubts that that he left it all on the mat... as he started to walk back the tunnel, which sloped upward a bit, as he began to climb it, he just faded against the wall of the tunnel in pure exhaustion with the S&C guys helping him... not making any judgment on that (others are much better at that than am I
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) it is something that watching on TV you likely didn’t see.
6. As for the officiating, I for one did not really have any complaints (for a change) and no real surprise in the arena... even Coach Eggum behaved himself, but again... the blowout score early might have washed away their competitive emotions a bit.
7. Fortunately I did not have a Mr Clipboard beside me today... but I did have Tom Talksalot sitting there chewing my ear off as I tried to watch the match
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... he was a nice man whose family “founded” Somerset,PA and then after the Civil War (oh yes, I got the whole family history) moved to Minnesota. The only reason I even mention this gentleman Is twofold:
a) at 17-0 he told me to not get too comfortable in that lead because Gable could close that gap quickly with 6pt fall. (I did not have the heart to tell him I’ve never seen Gable work that hard for extra team points... and oh, we still, had 165,174,& 184 ”in reserve”)
b) he said “there’s not a bad seat” in US Bank Stadium so don’t worry about Nationals... well, everyone else with whom I’ve spoken on this topic seams to place him squarely in the minority opinion!
well, sorry... this post got longer than I wanted... but it could be my last when you all figure out that I only missed two road duals this year... ASU & Iowa... hmm, what do those two have in common? Could it be, I’m the “road trip lucky charm”?
I’m going to go with “yes” and next year I’ll set a GoFundMe page for all of you to contribute to in order to make sure I get to all away duals next year for a perfect record again!
thank you to those who stuck it out to the end of this post... and thank for your posts that make this board the fun (most of the time) read it is!
Road warrior signing off until the post season!
Go State!