“Science” gets tossed around far too liberally these days, so instead let’s call it simply “a plan”. Cael, Cody, Casey, and Jake have a plan, and execute it quite well. Ordinarily, with July 1st as the start of the next recruiting calendar, this past month would be chock full ‘o recruiting news. Not so much this season at Dear Old State, thanks to the aforementioned “plan”, and execution of said “plan”. With Robbie Howard (125) and Beau Bartlett (133/141) as rising senior commits, plus (//deep breath) - Aaron Brooks (174/184), Joe Lee (165), Michael Beard (197), and Seth Nevills (285) coming off of greyshirt, well - looks like the plan works. Cael’s sorry to be so boring, but hopes you enjoy the national titles as consolation.
SportsCenter Category
In case you missed it a few weeks ago, Roman Bravo Young won Junior Pan Am Gold for Team USA. Here’s RBY on the way to the finals:
Put em to sleep. pic.twitter.com/2yYwDzihSC
— Roman Bravo-Young (@RomanBravoYoung) June 10, 2019
Bummer News Category
Our guy Zain appeared to sustain a knee injury over at the Yasar Dogu in his opening round loss to Yianni D, and followed that up with a hobbled 0-5 loss in the first round of consolations. The result of Yianni’s appeal of their Final X result will be announced by arbitration on July 29th. In other words, Zain could be asked to re-wrestle Yianni for a 5th (and 6th) time next Monday, and may have to do so with a busted knee. Which, that kinda stinks, if accurate.
And while we’re in the bummer category, we may as well point out that this is the 3rd busted knee for our Dear Old State senior team members - David got blowed up at Beat The Streets, Nolf at Team Trials semis, and now - apparently - Zain at Yasar Dogu. Not what we’ve hoped for this freestyle season, though all will be back and ready to make the 2020 Olympics.
Bo Nickal Category
Bo earned a best-of-3 wrestle-off against Jake Woodley for the U23 92kg Team USA spot, and won 2-0.