Thomas Garvie
tgarvie@uwyo.edu
In their first chance to impress in front of the home crowd, six Cowboys walked away from the War Memorial Field house with tournament victories.
Coming off of a successful showing at the Northern Colorado Open, the Cowboy grapplers set out to do the same here in Laramie. The Pokes finished Saturday’s tournament with 11 wrestlers finishing in the top four of their respective weight classes, including six champions. Despite a strong start for the team, head coach Mark Branch still sees a lot of work to be done
“I wasn’t happy with the result, we had a couple of guys lose matches they shouldn’t have.”
Branch said that if only a couple of guys win matches they should have, the team would have likely taken the tournament. Branch also said that it is not technical mistakes that are costing his guys matches in the early season, so much as attitudes in certain spots.
“We still aren’t as aggressive as we should be, we have guys hitting one move on bottom and if the other guy stops it then we stop.”
The fastest way into Coach Branch’s good graces for a wrestler seems to be an aggressive style on the mat. It is that same aggressive style that earned sophomore and Cheyenne native Bryce Meredith high praise as he would tallies two pins and a technical fall en route to a title in his debut with the cowboys.
“Bryce was the best example of that aggressive wrestling,” Brach said.
Meredith is not the only wrestler to earn public praise from his coach because of an aggressive style this season. Redshirt freshman P.T. Garcia received similar admiration from his head coach following a championship run a week ago at the Northern Colorado Open. Unfortunately for P.T. his follow up to a weekend in which he would amass four straight pins would fall a bit flat, as Garcia would fail to place.
His weight is the smaller problem for Garcia after the weekend in which he suffered a minor setback.
“P.T. tweaked his knee and he is gonna miss a couple of weeks but it is nothing major,” Brand said.
While an injury to an athlete is never good, this does display the benefit of a bit more depth than the team has had in recent seasons.
That kind of depth allows young redshirted wrestlers to continue to grow without being thrust into action prematurely. However it was three veterans that contributed half the individual titles for the Pokes. Juniors Drew Templman and Benjamin Stroh secured titles at 125 and 174 pounds respectively. Adding the third was senior Tanner Harms who showed flashes of dominance in his three victories on the way to a title at 285 pounds.
There were young wrestlers that came away with victories in the aperture division as well wrestling unattached to the team. Freshmen Drake foster and Dewy Krueger both grabbed crowns, both going 4-0 on the day. Krueger would add an outstanding wrestler award for the armature division.
When you add freshmen Ben Hornickle and Steven Allen who placed in the amateur division the young side of the squad is looking good early. Hornickle would even earn a mention from his head coach who said,
Coming out of the weekend, Branch has several coaching points he intends to focus on heading into the teams first conference duel with Air Force.
“We struggled staying aggressive when wrestling on the edge, we need to work on single leg finishes and we just aren’t flowing real well,” Branch said.
With the starting line up becoming more solid, and the wrestlers building on a couple of strong weekends, it should be an exciting opening to Big 12 action down in Colorado Springs.
