Happy New Year wise and learned wrestling fans! I hope everyone had an excellent 2023 and is in position to have a tremendous 2024. 

Rankings | Last Week's Roundup

The only NCAA D1 action to roundup in week 9 was at the 59th Midlands and the 2nd Soldier Salute. Summarizing the noteworthy events from both tournaments won’t take too long which will afford us some extra time to partake in a time-honored new year’s tradition: reflecting on the past. 

Next March will be the 7th NCAA Championship that I’ve covered as a professional, and not a day goes by since my first on the job that I am not humbled, blessed, and thankful for the rare privilege of being a part of wrestling media. 

Prior to joining the content team at FloSports, I held a fairly typical office job, where all my free time was spent following the sport of wrestling. Also a lot of the time I was being paid to do other worl was spent following wrestling. For instance: I posted incessantly on the USA Wrestling run mat dot com message board. 

By the way, quick shout out to anyone who knew me when I was anonymously posting as Jaroslav Hasek, a turn of the 20th century Czech satirist who happened to be the author of a book I had in college whose name I pilfered for my online handle. 

However, that message board, as fun as it was insufficient for quenching my nigh unslakable thirst for wrestling content.

So in 2014 I started blogging, for free, as a hobby. You can read all my old posts here. I think a lot of them of hold up over time.  

I also logged on to Twitter dot com and jumped into that online fray. Wrestling Twitter used to be a very different place ten years ago. 

Eventually, it became clear to me that I needed to at least try changing careers. While I am equipped with an undergraduate degree in journalism, those communication muscles were never exercised in a professional environment. I’d be lying if said this mid-life decision was not made with a healthy degree of trepidation.

Several rounds of interviews with FloWrestling, a rejection, a stint of pro bono blogging at Bloody Elbow, and another round of interviews later and I was making plans to move to Austin. 

So what’s the point of this meandering walk down memory lane? Not really sure beyond that I had space in the blog and was feeling wistful. 

I do want to reiterate my schmaltzy but genuine appreciation for everyone in the community. One of the silver linings for working in a niche sport is nobody is doing their job thinking they're going to get rich. They’re here because they’re passionate about the world's oldest and most sublime sport. It’s good company to keep. 

Now Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Roundup

There were no duals last week, hence this is no Dual of the Century, of the Week. But there were two excellent wrestling tournaments!

The 59th Midlands

You can find results to the 59th Midlands here. 

I also previewed the tournament, which you can check out here.  

I don’t think any of the most anticipated matchups I listed happened, partly because I didn’t have a full list of entries when I wrote the preview and partly because there were a ton of upsets. 

Although two guys I listed as in the Dark Horses, Sleepers and Landmines section actually won the tournament, so the preview wasn’t all misses.

And while we didn’t get the marquee matchups we’ve often seen at past Midlands, we did get a lot of interesting results. Like what? Well I’ll tell you.

• Lehigh's true freshman Luke Stanich beat #14 Eric Barnett, #28 Diego Sotelo, #11 Cooper Flynn and Eli Griffin and others to win 125. Does Lehigh now pull Stanich's redshirt or do they stick with Sheldon Seymour?
• Arizona State's Richie Figueroa had to injury default in his first match of the tourney. Terrible luck and we hope Figueroa has a speedy recovery!
• Michigan's Dylan Ragusin won 133 while still on redshirt. Chris Cannon has only wrestled one match this season which ended in an injury default so Ragusin's services may be needed this season. 
• The chaos of 125 spilled over to 133, as #5 ranked Sam Latona took losses #32 Zeth Romney of Cal Poly (who placed 3rd) and #8 Michael Colaiocco of Penn (who placed fourth).
• Things were slightly less chaotic at 141, as West Virginia's #21 Jordan Titus beat Penn's #16 CJ Composto. 
• Ty Whalen, who wrestled for Princeton last season but is deferring eligibility this season, was the surprise winner of 149, when he took out West Virginia's talented true freshman Ty Watters in the battle of the Ty's in the finals.
• Illinois' true freshman Kannon Webster lost to Watters but bounced back to finish third. Whether or not his redshirt gets pulled is still up in the air. 
• The always entertaining Jacori Teemer looked healthy and dangerous as he won 157.
• Dean Hamiti also looked dangerous as he tore through the 165 bracket, beating #12 Peyton Hall, who won a wild semifinal bout against #13 Caleb Fish, in the finals. 
• Harvard's #14 Phil Conigliaro had a great tournament, beating #8 Adam Kemp and #12 Justin McCoy on his way to the finals, but Illinois' #5 Edmund Ruth would not be denied the 174lb title. 
• 184 may have been the most chaotic weight at Midlands, as the unranked #12 seed Shane Liegel of Wisconsin beat the unranked #7 seed Maximus Hale in the finals. 
• It was an oasis of chalk at 197, as the #1 seed and #10 ranked Michael Beard of Lehigh beat the #2 seed and #12 ranked Luke Stout of Princeton.
• Finally, NC State's redshirting Isaac Trumble, who qualified for the past two NCAA tournaments at 197, wrestled up at 285 and won the heavyweight division. One of his wins was over Virginia Tech's true freshman Jim Mullen, who also played football for the Hokies this fall. 

Also, the Fighting Quakers hoisted the team trophy!

𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯 𝗠𝗶𝗱𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀 🏆

For the first time in program history, we have won the team title @midlandschampionship‼️#TheMovement x #FightOnPenn🔴🔵 pic.twitter.com/ZK6TX7kX10

— Penn Wrestling (@PennWrestling) December 31, 2023

The 2nd Soldier Salute

You can find results for the second annual Soldier Salute here.  

While a lot of the conversation about this tournament involved, at first, the tournament software it was using for brackets, and then, AJ Ferrari, who provided his own unique version of a salute, I’ll focus on the interesting results for now. 

• It wouldn't be 125 pounds if we didn't have upsets. Iowa's #17 Drake Ayala beat Wyoming's #7 Jore Volk in a wild finals match.
• Iowa's true freshman Kale Peterson beat #12 Angelo Rini but was then defeated by his teammate, #11 Brody Teske, who would win the bracket over Jacob Van Dee of Nebraska in the finals. Peterson finished in fourth, losing to another teammate, Cullan Schriever in the third-place match. Iowa has a surfeit of talented lightweights, as usual.
• In perhaps the best individual match of the week, #1 Real Woods of Iowa beat #5 Lachlan McNeil of North Carolina in the 141lb finals.
• Iowa had a handful of entries at 149. Caleb Rathjen beat fellow Hawkeye Cade Siebrecht in the quarters, then beat his #8 ranked teammate Victor Voinovich in the semis, and lastly, he was victorious over his potential future teammate Anthony Ferrari in the finals. 
• Iowa State's Paniro Johnson returned to the mat, wrestling unattached at 157. He lost to South Dakota State's #18 Cael Swensen in the semifinals. Swensen was bested by Iowa's #2 Jared Franek in the finals. 
• The All-Hawkeye show continued at 165, where #7 Michael Caliendo beat Patrick Kennedy in a de facto wrestle-off in the finals.
• Another Iowan won 174, as true freshman Gabe Arnold defeated Columbia's #13 Lennox Wolak in the finals. Gabe can still redshirt this season but it looks increasingly like he'll be the Hawkeye starter. 
•  Minnesota yanked the spotlight away from Iowa for the 184-pound finals, although it was only momentarily as true freshman Max McEnelly forfeited to Gopher starter #10 Isaiah Salazar in the finals. 
• #33 Bennett Tabor of Minnesota did have to wrestle for his title at 285, as he defeated South Dakota State's Luke Rasmussen in the finals. 
• Oh yeah and Iowa's Zach Glazier won 197-pounds. 

As for the Ferrari farrago, if you absolutely must read more about it, you can check out this article, and this follow up article, and listen to CP's take on the matter. 

What's Next For AJ Ferrari And Iowa After The Soldier Salute Meltdown? pic.twitter.com/7OJQJI396Q

— FloWrestling (@FloWrestling) December 31, 2023

In Other News

The Ivy League announced they would be hosting their own NCAA qualifying tournament starting next season. This means the six Ivy programs (Cornell, Penn, Princeton, Harvard, Columbia and Brown) will wrestle in their last EIWA Championship this March. 

I missed this last week but It's substantial news for all the programs in the EIWA. 

The Ivy League has announced the addition of a postseason wrestling tournament, set to begin in the 2024-25 academic year. In the last 10 years, Ivies have been crowned national champions 10 times and have earned 50 All-American honors. 🌿🤼

📰 » https://t.co/sKvfdXaFv1 pic.twitter.com/IrvS9vMpbw

— Ivy League (@IvyLeague) December 19, 2023

The EIWA was started by four Ivy League schools in 1905, making it older than the Ivy League itself. 

For most fans, either of the Ivy League or EIWA programs, not much will change. For college wrestling in general, another conference sponsoring wrestling, especially one as prestigious as the Ivy League, is probably a positive thing. Hopefully, Yale and Dartmouth will get their act together and start wrestling programs now. 

Shameless Plug For FloWrestling Original Videos

One thing you often hear from the wrestling community is that they want the sport to be more accessible in order to draw in more new fans to the world's oldest and raddest sport. And we here at FloSports couldn't agree more! 

That's why we've been putting more and more of our best content on YouTube, so that you diehards reading this (free) blog can share those videos with your friends and family, all for free!

Did you know that we recently posted our top 10 social media posts of the year? They all went up as YouTube shorts, which is Google’s Alphabet’s version of TikTok posts, but I’ll link to the Instagram Reels, which is Facebook’s Meta’s version of TikTok posts. 

1. Christian Castilo’s flying squirrel in the U17 semifinals
2. Dude gets super bombed at the African Championships
3. Christian Carroll makes the U20 world team and gets admonished for popping top
4. DJ Gillett runs his opponent straight out of the building
5. High Schooler Joel Adams beats 2020 Olympian Alejandro Sancho (who recently just won 2023 Senior Nationals)
6. Arm throw fever!
7. The wildest Greco bomb of them all
8. Cohlton Shultz induces a panic attack
9. The Magic Man vs Yazdani saga (Iranian fans don’t click!)
10. The Musukaev sprinter shot compilation (my personal fav)

Honorable mention for the referee plank workout!

Send Me Tips!

This roundup is for you, so if you see something noteworthy happen in D1 NCAA wrestling, let me know so that I can make note of it! 

Best way to reach me is on Twitter (@speywrestle) or email [andrew.spey@flosports.tv].

Next week is the Southern Scuffle on Monday and Tuesday, the F&M Open on Friday. and a smattering of duals throughout. 

Finally, one more big thank you to the entire community. Especially the wise and learned readers of this blog. Without you, this would be nothing more than a diary!