When you think of Northwestern the names Jake Herbert, Jason Welch, Mike McMullan and Jason Tsirtsis have to come to mind among plenty others to wear the purple and black over the years.



Although these guys came into college with a ton of promise and talent, it was the grind of the Wildcat wrestling room that took them to the next level. During last season we took a trip to campus that hosts Midlands and got an inside look at what goes down during a practice. Unsurprisingly, these guys really go at it. Tsirtsis went after a much bigger, strong and heavier Pierce Harger with reckless abandon with neither guy showing signs of slowing down. McMullen did a complete ironman practice as he went back and forth between two partners.

Now this was late in the season and each one of these guys was in good form, but how did they get there? What did they do to make sure they were improving day in and day out?

“At the beginning of the year we are really building our base,” said Northwestern’s coach Drew Pariano. “Some of the freshman might need some work from the bottom or top position specifically; everyone is usually pretty good on their feet. But I think having the perfect combination of live wrestling and drilling is very important throughout the year. Some practices could be 60/40 either way when it comes to that, but there needs to be a divide. Technique is so important in college wrestling, finishing is so important in college wrestling and so is securing your escape point so having the divide is very important.”

Although there needs to be a balance, what determines that balance comes from whom you have in your wrestling. It’s simple to say that your guys need to drill just as much as they wrestle live. But how do you come to that conclusion.

“That’s all based on your team and what they need to work on,” Pariano went on to say. “Certain weeks are different than other weeks. For us some weeks are short because you have two Big10 matches on Friday and Sunday. That’s very different than just having a match on a Sunday. It makes the practices very different. You can push harder that week on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday to get more out of those days. But it really comes down to your teams.”

Though plenty of this may sound familiar and like it’s the basis for plenty of teams, for coach Pariano and Northwestern sticking to their core work ethic is very essential because of the tough “grind of the Big10.”

“Knowing when to train hard, knowing when to take a day and recover and getting the proper amount of sleep is huge for us because we are up to nine dual meets in the Big10,” Pariano said. “When we start grinding through our conference schedule we have to be precise about your training. They might lift early in the morning around 7am then have a team practice at 3:30pm. I like the breaks in between so that it doesn’t seem like everything is running into each other. If they want they will do individual practices to fine tune technique, but allowing their body time to recover is very important. And as the season goes on we will have a normal practice, but cut down on the time.”

Having that smart approach to training to combat a tough conference schedule is definitely one of the cornerstones of what Pariano incorporates into his program. Along with that is making sure that they know their competition so that they can execute on what they do best. Again, the balanced approached is what keeps them improving on a daily basis.



“You have to know your opponent in order to execute,” he said. Prepping for what they do best is one thing, but if your opponent is good at stopping you go-to takedown it’s probably not going to benefit you very much. Going hand-in-hand with everything is making sure that you are peaking at the right time during the season. And though the point may have been hammered home a lot so far, the conference that Northwestern compete is doesn’t make anything easy.

“I feel like in the Big10 we are grinding all the time,” Pariano admitted. “In our conference you can’t have a bad weekend, every match is important. But the key is not to peak too early. You don’t want to be peaking at Midlands. One of the most challenging things for our conference is that you need to peak twice. You need to peak at Big 10’s and you need to peak again at NCAA’s. Some people would say that’s impossible to do, but it’s not because you’ve seen it done. Leading up to those two weeks it’s imperative you’re doing everything right. It’s crazy, but it’s the world we live in.”