Wrestling Blogs - Jim Brown

A fan is a fan, is a fan

… and wrestling is wrestling.

I attended the 2008 wrestling Dream Team Classic in Iowa City Saturday night. The twelve-year-old event pits a team of national high school all stars against an all-star team from the host state. This year’s edition featured 13 of the 14 nationally number-one rated wrestlers and had two #1 vs. #2 matches. For complete results see The Predicament at http://www.thepredicament.com.

The West High School gym was almost completely full and it was an interesting mix of fans. Since two members of the Iowa team, Nate Moore and Grant Gambrall, were Iowa City West wrestlers there was a large contingent of West students in attendance. The fact that Moore, Gambrall, Linn-Mar’s Matt McDonough and Waverly-Shell Rock’s Mark Ballweg will all be wrestling for the University of Iowa next year brought out many, many Hawkeye fans. Creston’s Andrew Long and Waverly-Shell Rock’s Eric Thompson are both headed to Iowa State, so there was Cyclone “cardinal and gold” also in evidence. Add to this the family and friends of the competitors and you have a pretty good picture of the crowd.

We have a skewed view of wrestling in Iowa. Every weekend during the high school season we flock to gyms around the state to watch young athletes compete in the world’s “oldest and greatest” sport. Year in and year out the University of Iowa leads the nation in college wrestling attendance and Iowa State perennially finishes in the top five in that category. Wrestling fans in Iowa have a hard time understanding why fans in other parts of the country don’t support the sport the way we do.

But – we could be better.

For the uninitiated – American high school and college wrestlers compete in what is known as “folkstyle” wrestling. International wrestling – including the Olympics – is held in freestyle and Greco-Roman. For American interscholastic and intercollegiate grapplers these are “off-season” styles. Most athletes will focus on the American style until graduation and then concentrate on an international style.

American fans (even in Iowa), however, tend to be compartmentalized in their support. Many who love high school wrestling don’t follow the college version – and vice versa. Where we Americans all fall short is supporting our post-graduate athletes in their international careers. The casual fan may recognize names like Dan Gable, John Smith, Bruce Baumgartner or Cael Sanderson, but many could not list the accomplishments of Lee Kemp or Greg Gibson or Tricia Saunders.

The styles are different, the rules are different and the scoring is different – but it’s all wrestling. There are several opportunities for you to get out and support these athletes. The Senior Nationals for men’s freestyle and Greco-Roman and women’s freestyle will be held April 23 –26 in Las Vegas. There will be Olympic trial qualifying tournaments in Waterloo, IA May 8 – 10 and Pueblo, CO May 15- 17. The Olympic trials will then be in Las Vegas on June 13 –15 … all leading up to the Olympics. For a complete nationwide summer schedule visit USA Wrestling’s website www.themat.com.


Okay, let’s watch some wrestling.



Bill Zadick’s 2006 World Freestyle gold medal match




Highlights from the USA’s 2007 World Greco-Roman team championship



Olympic silver medallist, Sara McMann at the 2007 World Cup