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NLWC/PSU Wrestling at the Olympic Team Trials


The next step in the process for those that dream of Olympic Gold

TV coverage is on NBC's Peacock, starting at 11 am EDT, and NBC SN tonight and tomorrow night. See comments.

USA wrestling has the list of all entries and seeds.

Brackets are provided by Trackwrestling. Go to Trackwrestling.com select Browse>Tournaments>2020 US Olympic Team Trials

All 3 Olympic class wrestling events will be contested today, Men's and Women's Freestyle and Greco Roman. We're mostly focusing on Men's Freestyle but Mason Manville is competing at 77kg in Greco Roman and a number of Women Freestylers train at NLWC and are coached by, primarily, Mark McKnight. I'll try to update those through out the day.

Men's Freestyle

57kg Thomas Gilman, erstwhile Hawkeye has been training with the NLWC for the last year and comes in as the top seed. Daton Fix and Vito Arujau are the top competition, unfortunately, Spencer Lee is injured and Nick Suriano has been hit by the Covid. They'll wrestle through the semifinals tonight and the best of 3 finals will be Saturday Night.

65kg Zain Retherford, Nick Lee represent NLWC and PSU past National Champ Frank Molinaro has put his retirement on hold for one more go. Frank is currently an assistant at Arizona State and trains with Sunkist Kids. Zain is the co-favorite here along with Yianni Diakomiholis. Jordan Oliver is a threat and James Green has made the tough cut from 70 kg. Prelims today, semi's tonight and best of 3 finals on Saturday Night.

74kg Jason Nolf and Vincenzo Joseph, Jordan Burroughs sits in tomorrow nights finals as a defending World Medalist and Kyle Dake is advanced to the semi finals of the challenge bracket as a defending World Champ at a non-Olympic weight class. Great experience for Nolf and Cenzo here and I like Nolf's chances to get to tonight's challenge bracket finals against Dake. But, this is all about Burroughs and Dake tomorrow night, anything else would be a stunning upset. Dake has been the best in the World the last couple of years at 79kg, seems like he's handled the cut well, and I'm thinking he's going to win this tomorrow night. Burroughs won't go down with out a fight though. Don't miss this.

86kg David Taylor, Bo Nickal, Carter Starocci, and Aaron Brooks. Taylor's a heavy favorite in this loaded bracket and, as you can see, the bracket is heavy with PSU National Champions. Zahid Valencia, Gabe Dean and Myles Martin are the best of the rest here and everyone's favorite clown Pat Downey is the 3 seed based on earning the 2019 World Team slot when Taylor was injured. Nickal and Starocci meet in Round 1. Tough match for Carter. Winner get's Downey to advance to tonight's semi finals. I'll pick Gabe Dean to beat Myles Martin to face the Magic Man in the other semifinal tonight. Winners meet in best of 3 Saturday night.

97kg Kyle Snyder sits in tomorrow's best of 3 finals. J'Den Cox, like Dake, is advanced to the challenger semi finals. LIke 74 kgs, today's the formalities to get to Saturday Night for Snyder v. Cox. Check out Wisconsin freshman Braxton Amos though if you can. He skipped the NCAA season this year so we'll see him next year and he's also competing in Greco today.

125kg, Greg Kerkvliet is our guy here. He'll get Mason Parris to open in the quarter final match. Take a look at the bracket though Gwiz and the old guys are all in the top half and young bucks Steveson and Tanner Hall join Kerk and Parris in the bottom. Everyone's expecting Gwiz and Steveson to advance to tomorrow's best of 3 finals.

That's your quick and dirty preview. Let me know where I messed up. I'll be around most of the day trying to post scores and mat assignments. If you're new to Freestyle feel free to fire out your questions and we'll try to provide answers for you.

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