LaCrosse Eagles Blog

One week from today, the wrestlers of the WIAC will be battling for their right to compete at the NCAA Div. III National Championships. The WIAC has proven to be one of the toughest conferences in the country and every match is a battle. Next Sunday will be no different. We here at La Crosse are getting ready for a knock ‘em down drag ‘em out fight to the top of the conference podium.

Most of the ten guys competing at conference have had a couple weeks off of competing and are chomping at the bit to shake hands with someone not in La Crosse workout gear. We have continued to have morning run/lifts and good, hard practices in the afternoon. We are fine tuning with individual workouts and making those small adjustments every wrestler needs. The coaching staff has been cutting down the number of minutes on the mat as we are getting in there, getting done what we need to get done, and getting out of there.

Speaking of the coaching staff… Coach Malecek is the smartest coach I’ve ever had when it comes to having his wrestlers physically and mentally ready to go at the right time of the year. We have all believed in his system and in effect have ten guys ready to compete at the conference tournament with fresh legs and minds.

With all that said, I invite everyone to the WIAC Championships hosted by UW La Crosse on Sunday February 18th. The university as a whole is excited to host this event that showcases some of the best college wrestlers in the country. Please follow the link below for tournament information. Come and support these wrestlers that work so hard all year long and do it for the love of the sport and the chance to compete.

http://www.uwlax.edu/athletics/mwrestle/wiacchampionships/index.html

Good luck to all,
Ross Needham
UW-L 157

Hello everyone and Merry Christmas!!

The holiday season is always an interesting time for most college wrestlers. Many things are happening and changing. On the positive side, classes have come to an end. Studying is done and student athletes finally get a mental break from studying and taking tests. Also we get a chance to go home and spend time with our families, not to mention a chance to poke our faces in our old wrestling rooms. It is always nice to revisit the mat space that we once called home and lend our ex coaches a helping hand. The high school coaches seem to like having us, and we love sharing our experiences with them as well as getting a workout of our own in during their practice time. The best part of Christmas break is the presents and food!! Santa was very generous to me and so were all the people who cooked the meals I ate when I was home. This leads me to the negative side of Christmas break. Food!! It is everywhere. Chocolate, caramel, candy, cookies, pie, hams, potatoes, stuffing, and the list goes on and on.... With competition at the Midlands quickly approaching, it is important to steer clear of the junk food and eat in moderation (I am sure everyone at least sampled grandma's cookies, but moderation is key!!)

Over the break, it is important to get workouts in. Wrestling, lifting, and running are all things we need to do over the break. Although this type of thing seems like a pain in the hinder to the public, it really is not that bad. We find early morning runs in the cold to be rewarding when the people we know recognize us and wave happily as they drive to work. We really enjoy entering the local high school wrestling room in the evening and getting a workout in. It is an even better feeling when practice is over and everyone is heading to the locker room and we walk past it to the weight room. Some curious high schoolers follow to see what we are doing. As we lift it makes us feel good that these young men are interested in what we are doing. We feel like great leaders as we ask those watching to join us and put them through an extra workout. There is nothing better than doing our workouts knowing that someone is watching and learning. This type of situation is plenty of motivation for us college athletes to get good workouts in over holiday break.

For most of our wrestlers at UWL, the holiday break ends tomorrow. We continue to prepare for Midlands as we come back together as a team and practice. Hopefully we will represent Wiscsonsin wrestling well at this prestigious tournament. We look forward to sharing our results and thoughts with you in the future.

Merry Christmas -- I wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season!

Jason Lulloff
UWL 184#

It seems like just yesterday we were going on preseason runs and meeting the new freshmen. And here we are, taking finals and getting some last workouts in before we head home for a little Christmas break. Wow, time sure does fly when you’re having fun.

Tuesday night we wrestled St. Point here in La Crosse. We had a fine fan turnout and they were rewarded with some good wrestling. There were some hard fought matches and thankfully we came out on top more times than they did. It is always great to wrestle Point. They are a well coached team that comes out and wrestles hard. We really tried to push the pace and go out fight for seven minutes. We did that to some degree, but of course we are not satisfied and will continue to work on it.

We don’t compete now until Midlands on the 29th &30th. This is a break from competition that comes at a good time for us. We are a little banged up at the moment, but nothing a little time, ice and rehab won’t fix. Of course we aren’t going to sit around and eat candy canes and watch Elf all day. We are studying hard for finals and planning our workouts around exams and study sessions. We are about to embark on the hardest part of our training and we can’t afford to slack now.

Early next week, most of the guys will be heading home. A lot of guys will be making their way to their old high school wrestling rooms and spending time with family and friends. With that said, I would like to wish everyone a safe and enjoyable holiday season. You can look forward to hearing more from the UW-L wrestling team in the New Year.

Happy Holidays,
Ross Needham
157 UWL

The last week has been interesting to say the least for La Crosse wrestling. On Thursday, we suffered our first conference dual meet lost since 2003. There are no excuses to explain what happened in Platteville. They simply came out, wrestled hard and got the pins when they had the opportunities. Did we wrestle our best? No. Is this the line-up we will have at the end of the year? Probably not. But, that goes to show everyone that on any given night in the WIAC, if you don’t come out and wrestle your rear ends off, you could get beat.

Coach Malecek addressed some issues from Thursday night and stressed those to the entire team on Friday and throughout the day on Saturday. With that said, we got back on track a little bit at the Wisconsin Open at Parkside. In some areas we wrestled much better and improved from Thursday. In other areas we will continue to work and get back to basics. All in all, we were modestly impressed with what we saw from our guys on Saturday. We had great performances from Josh Chelf and Jason Lulloff to name a few. Chelf won the 174 bracket with four pins on the day, winning the “Most Pins in Least Amount of Time” award. Lulloff won the 184 bracket on his way to winning the “Sportsmanship” award. Congrats to those guys and check out the rest of the team’s results at trackwrestling.com.

As for myself, I did not wrestle this weekend. I have had some injuries in the last couple of weeks and with the advising of our athletic training staff and Coach Malecek, I rested my body for a couple of days. We have another conference dual on Wednesday and the St. Cloud Open on Saturday that I need to be ready for. Although it killed me to stand at mat side and watch my teammates wrestle, I know there that it was the best thing to do at this point in the season.

As anyone who has wrestled before knows, it only takes a couple of days to get out of shape. With that in mind, I went for a run this morning before the Packer game. I layered up with clothes, stocking caps and gloves. I did this not to shed pounds, but to keep from freezing to death. As I ran through downtown La Crosse with a towel pulled tight across my face and my stocking hat pulled down below my eyebrows, I was once again reminded of how crazy wrestlers are. I fed off the crazy looks and waves from people in their cars as they drove by. Wrestlers truly are a breed unlike any other.

Thanks for your time and interest in La Crosse wrestling. Please help spread the word about this website; they have a great thing going here. You’ll here from me again soon. Good luck to all teams competing this week.

Yours in Wrestling,
Ross Needham
157 UWL

Hey all wrestlers and wrestling fans-
First of all, I would like to thank WisconsinGrappler.com for putting this together. It is great to see WI college wrestling in the limelight. I hope everyone enjoys following along with all the teams and shows their support for all the guys who work so hard to compete in the world's greatest sport.

Secondly, welcome to the UW La Crosse wrestling blog. Both Jason Lulloff and myself will be posting throughout the season. We'll be letting you know what's going on with our team and give you a little peek in to the life of a D3 college wrestler.

And now onto the season thus far... I'm not going to go into the stats and records because you can look those up for yourselves by following the links on this site. I will say though, we have been competing for the past couple of weeks at opens and at a dual meet tournament in MI. It has been great to pound on someone else since we have been beating each other up since school started. We have had some ups (wrestling our style and beating top quality wrestlers) and downs (injuries), but we understand that we are running a marathon, not a sprint. We will be were we want to be when the time rolls around.

The biggest change so far this season is our new head coach. Coach Dave Malecek has been a much welcomed addition to the program. He has adjusted to us as much as we have adjusted to him. He has the right attitude towards training and wants to win now. I have never met someone so dedicated to the sport and to the success of his athletes. The future of the program is in great hands with Coach Malecek. Welcome to the Revolution.

Thank you all for reading the first blog entry from UW-L. We appreciate all your support. Stay tuned for more postings as the season rolls on.

Yours in wrestling,
Ross Needham
157 lbs. UWL