Wrestling team starts season off strong with home meet Friday
The Utah State Wrestling Club held their first meet of the spring semester Friday night in the Nelson Fieldhouse, facing off against rivals Weber State and BYU-Idaho.
The meet consisted of each team facing against the other, with two matches going at a time. USU beat both Weber State and BYU-I with scores of 40-3 and 36-30, respectively, and Weber and BYU-I tied 6-6. Utah State wrestled the most against the two other schools because of the better turnout by their club members, which is why BYU-I and Weber State had such low scores against each other.
Utah State had quite a few wrestlers that did well, including Nick Porter, Mitchell Rasmussen and Zach Walker who helped the team dominate the Wildcats and pull out a closer win against BYU-I.
“We had quite a few guys play well, and we have some strong kids (on our team),” head coach Andrew Snarr said.
BYU-Idaho wrestler Robert Cox, who wrestled a few of the Utah State wrestlers when they were in high school, was the standout for BYU-I in the close match between the two teams.
“He’s from Star Valley, which is where a few of us are from, but he’s a good kid and a good wrestler,” USU’s Walker said.
Walker, who won both of his matches by eight points or more, also doubled as a referee along with a few other wrestlers, and none seemed out of place as a ref, keeping each of the matches clean and fair.
The Utah State club seems to have quite a good team and is returning many good wrestlers from last year.
“We have about four or five former state champions from high school on our team and we all won most of our matches,” said Walker, who also won a state championship in high school.
But, as with any team after a long break, they weren’t at one hundred percent. “Each team was pretty out of shape because of the break, but I think if we work on our conditioning, we’ll do a lot better overall,” Snarr said.
The wrestling team’s next meet is in Rock Springs, Wyo., next weekend against Colorado University, Colorado State University, Weber State University and BYU-Idaho.
“We need to practice really hard and that’s about all we can do this week,” Snarr said.
They also have regionals at the end of February in San Jose, Calif. against Division II teams and other school clubs. The teams who place first in regionals will move on to nationals in Georgia, with a few others going as wild card picks.
“We’ll have about 10-12 kids going to regionals but that’s a tough state (to wrestle),” Walker said.
– j.mill@aggiemail.usu.edu