Wisconsin Grappler Blogs

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

Our season has begun as we recently participated in the UW-Stevens Point Open and the Concordia Open. We wrestled pretty well in both of these tournaments. On Wednesday, November 29, we will be dualing Upper Iowa (ranked 8th in DII) at UW-Parkside. It should be a good dual. And on Saturday, December 2, we will be hosting the Wisconsin Open. There should be a lot of good competition there with around 300 wrestlers.

Date: 11/27/06
By: Eli Felts

So far this season has been going well. We’ve been practicing for about two months now. Our team has really come along way this year. We had a solid core of guys coming back from last year and we got a really good freshman class in this year. Our freshmen all have a great work ethic and they are a big reason that our program is starting to turn the corner. We have a full practice room now, which is a nice change from our thin numbers last year. There is a lot more competition in the room, as a lot of the younger guys are pushing the veterans, and it’s really showing with some of our early season results. We won our first conference dual, beating #25 UW-Platteville 26-19, and have had some solid showings in our first two tournaments. We’re starting to make some noise, and if we keep working the way we have been we’re going to keep being successful. It’s an exciting time to be a UW-Oshkosh wrestler!
Personally, I feel like I’ve come along way this season. I came to UW-O for the second half of the season last year. I wrestled 174 mostly, but I felt like last year I was really just knocking rust off and adjusting to college wrestling after being out of the sport for a year and a half. During the off-season, I worked very hard in the weight room and wrestling in preparation for my first full college season. This season, I dropped down to 165. I lost my wrestle off 5-4 to Kevin Luedtke, so I have only been wrestling in tournaments. It’s obviously disappointing to not be in the starting lineup, but I’m making the best of it. Kevin and I push each other very hard in practice and I think that having that competition every day is making both of us better. I feel like I’ve improved more in the first two months of this season, as a backup, than I ever have before.
Right now, we are just returning from Thanksgiving break. We had 4 days off of wrestling, which is by far the longest break we’ve had since wrestling started. I’m feeling very refreshed and I’m ready to get back to the grind! In the next couple weeks we will be competing and wrapping up the fall semester, so it should be a busy and exciting time.

Date: 11/13/2006
By: Karl Voeck

To me wrestling season never stops, but you can tell it’s time for competitions to start. We started many weeks ago for this upcoming season. This included lifting, running, wrestling, and a lot of stadiums. I started preparing for this tournament weeks ago by starting to watch my weight because I am dropping a weight class this year and I want to do it the right way. As a Warhawk wrestler you wake up to go to lift and its dark outside. Then later in the afternoon you go to practice and after practice its dark outside again. The practices get more and more intense. Then you’re on a bus to your first competition. It has started. The wrestling season is here. I am very excited to get my junior year under way. The Warhawk wrestling team started its season off at the Stevens Point Open last weekend. Our freshman classes proved that they were one of the best recruiting classes in the WIAC conference with a very strong showing. Of course there are still a lot of things we need to work on as a team. Every week is a new week and brings new learning experiences. So, with our first tournament under our belt we have started the 2006-07 wrestling season.

At the moment I was able to walk it seemed like wrestling was in my blood. My dad wrestled in high school and he taught me a lot of things about the sport. My dad (Scott) wrestled for Hartford Union High School and ended up taking 4th in the state his senior year, when there was only 1 division back then. Once I got into kindergarten I started wrestling for the club team at Hartford. My mom and dad took me and my brothers to tournaments every Saturday and almost every Sunday. I finished my grade school years coming away with 4 kids Folkstyle State Championships. I owe a lot of my achievements in wrestling, and in life, to my parents. Once, I entered high school at Hartford the competition level got a little better. My goal was to become a high school state champion. However, I fell short of my goal and finished my high school years with a 4th, and two runner-up finishes at the state meet. It was the most disappointing time in my life as a wrestler. However, I regrouped and told myself that I wasn't done yet! The biggest thing my parents and coaches told me throughout my life is to never give up. And that's just what I did. I didn't give up and didn't become satisfied with my end result in high school wrestling. After high school, Coach Koch from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, offered me a scholarship to wrestle. I signed the papers and I had one goal in mind--To become a National Champion. As I found out early, college wrestling was extremely more competitive than high school wrestling. However, I took the challenge and in my freshman year at Parkside I was the starter at 149lbs. and became an All-American finishing 8th in the nation. My sophomore I also wrestled at 149 lbs. but my season didn't go so well. I missed qualifying for the national tournament. In my junior year I decided to redshirt and focus on what I really needed to work on to become a national champion. I began working more on the things that I needed to improve on in my wrestling. I also lifted weights harder and did a lot more cardio. As my senior year approached, I felt ready and eager to get back on the mat. I wrote down my goals and posted my ultimate goal of becoming a national champ above my bed. Each morning and night I would look at the goal and believe that it would come true. In order to become a great wrestler, I believe, you not only need to be in top physical condition and a great technician, but you also need the mental aspect. If you don't believe in yourself you'll never end up accomplishing what you want. As a result of my hard work and great mental attitude my senior year, I ended up achieving my goal. I became a National Champion! It was the best feeling in the world. All the hard work and dedication paid off. My past failures didn't faze me anymore. My finals match at the National tournament was a thriller. It all came down to the life lesson my parents taught me early on when I was a child--Never Give Up! I was down 6-0 with only 45 seconds left in the third period when I got my opponent from Fort Hays in a near side cradle and ended up pinning him. Now, that I am in my final year of wrestling in college I made up new goals. My ultimate goal again is to become a National Champion. Another goal I have is to help make my two brothers into National Champions. My two brothers (Kyle and Craig) have pushed me and made me who I am today. Without them and my family I would have a much tougher time accomplishing my goals. Once this season is over I am going to greatly miss competing. I am going to leave everything I have on the mat so there won't be any regrets later on in life.

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