Welcome to freestyle season, friends. Wrestling’s second season begins this weekend, as our senior-level Team USA representatives travel south to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to settle “best in the western hemisphere of planet Earth” - so that’s a pretty cool thing. Among the participants will be two Nittany Lion Wrestling Club members - Josh Rodriguez at 57kg, and the Magic Man, son of Dear Old State, and 2018 World gold medalist, David Taylor.

Joining Dave (86kg) and Josh (57kg) will be 2018 World Bronze Joe Colon (61kg - Fresno RTC), Colt McCrystal (65kg - Nebraska RTC), Anthony Ashnault (70kg - NJRTC), Jordan Burroughs (74kg - Nebby), Chandler Rogers (79kg - Okie State), J’Den Cox (92kg - OTC), Kyle Snyder (97kg - Ohio RTC), and honorary Nittany Lion, Nick Gwiazdowski (125kg - NCST RTC).

That’s a boatload of medals - and some fresh faces. Should be a good time. But you’ll need a TrackWrestling.com subscription to watch live.

The Freestyle Season Schedule

Here’s the rest of your 2019 freestyle season schedule:

• 4/24 - US Open
• 5/3 - Last Chance Qualifier
• 5/6 - Beat The Streets
• 5/17 - Junior and Senior World Team Trials
• 5/31 - Cadet & U23 Nationals
• 6/5 - Junior Pan Ams
• 6/8 - Final X (Piscataway)
• 6/15 - Final X (Omaha)
• 6/28 - Cadet Pan Ams
• 7/11 - Yasar Dogu
• 7/29 - Cadet Worlds (Sofia, Bulgaria)
• 8/12 - Junior Worlds (Tallinn, Estonia)
• 9/14 - Senior Worlds (Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan)
• 10/28 - U23 Worlds (Budapest, Hungary)
• 12/19 - World Clubs Cup (Tehran, Iran)

Like we said - it’s an entire second season. As in previous years, look for weekly or bi-weekly posts here at BSD to stay abreast of the action.

Other Stuff

• Flo (paywall) released their 2020 recruiting “Big Board”. Six of the top 10 are already verbally committed, including #4 overall Robbie Howard (Bergen Catholic) who’s chosen Penn State.
• Like the foosball recruiting - actually, probably even more than the foosball recruiting - it’s imperative that your program secure the elite preps.
• How imperative? Here’s a statistic for you. The top 50 recruits from each of the 2010 - 2016 recruiting classes have already earned 294 All-American honors, made the NCAA finals 84 times, and won 43 individual titles.
• If you want to get even more specific, of those honors won, the top 15 recruits account for 53% of those AAs, 74% of the finals appearances, and 86% of the individual titles won.
• In other words, if you’re interested in winning team titles, then sign top 15 recruits.