Beyond the Mat - Brad Bailey

All it took was a little encouragement. Although he originally believed his athletic calling to be baseball, Brad Bailey’s father, once a wrestler at Columbia, gave his son a stern nudge towards the direction of wrestling at a young age.

“When I was younger, I didn’t really have a choice,” Bailey said, chuckling. “My dad wrestled for Columbia and he made me do it when I was younger. I didn’t really like it at first, I always saw myself as more of a baseball player when I was young. However, in middle school and high school I started to like it a little bit more; I started to like the challenge. I just don’t think I was ready for it at first. It just kinda grew from there.”

For Bailey, he never felt like he had to wrestle. Rather, because of the wrestling heritage that exists within his family, he believed not to wrestle would lead to disappointment.

“There was a little bit of pressure and [my dad] expected a lot of me,” Bailey said. “I guess he never made me do it, but it was highly important that I [wrestled]. I could’ve quit if I wanted, but he would have been very disappointed.”

As he has grown as a wrestler, Bailey has come to enjoy having a father who strongly encouraged him to become one. Now that Bailey has grown into the sport and come to love it, he is reaping the benefits of having someone so close to him who knows everything there is to know about the sport.

“It’s great to be in a house with someone who has been through [everything]. Just drawing on his experiences, knowing that he’s been there…is pretty cool,” he said.

Like every other wrestler, Bailey has days where he struggles to make it through on the mat. It would probably be easy to quit. Thankfully, Bailey has his father, who is ready to pass along the knowledge he gained as a wrestler at Columbia to his son.

Despite the immense importance this advice and wisdom has played in Bailey’s wrestling career, he doesn’t recall one or two pieces sticking out more than the rest. Instead, Bailey relishes in the fact that his father will always be a phone call away, ready to reassure him when times are tough. In many ways, Bailey is happy that he almost always knows ahead of time what his dad will say to him when he picks up the phone.

For Bailey, having someone to rely on who is removed the immediate situation has paid huge dividends.

“Just stick with it,” Bailey said when asked what his dad usually tells him. “It’s always stuff I know and I can predict what he’s going to say. It’s always good to get the perspective of someone who is outside the situation a little bit. I think he provides a bigger picture.”

Perhaps as a result of all these conversations, Bailey is confident that, despite his father’s previous allegiances to Columbia, an EIWA rival, he has managed to convert his father to a Diplomat.

“He’s an F&M fan now, I’d have to say,” Bailey said with a smile.

Beyond what his father has taught him, Bailey has garnered a lifetime worth of lessons and knowledge from the sport he now loves. Like every other wrestler at F&M, Bailey has taken the lessons the sport has taught him and applied them to the real world.

“Responsibility,” Bailey said when asked for a specific example. “You have to hold yourself accountable because your opponent is always going to hold you accountable. Hard work. If you work as hard as you do in the wrestling room in real life, grades, or social situations, you’ll be fine. The real world can’t be as hard as wrestling. It can’t be.”

alma mater of current F&M head coach Mike Rogers, made the connection that would eventually put Bailey on a course to become a Diplomat.

“I ended up here because my dad is the trainer for the Lock Haven wrestling team,” Bailey said. “When F&M brought Fullowan down to the tournament there last year, my dad knew [coach Rogers] just from operating on him or something, and he said, ‘Brad is looking for someplace to wrestle.’ I had never heard of F&M before that. Everything else just seemed to fall into place.”

Despite his lack of knowledge of F&M, Bailey liked what he heard when he spoke with both Rogers and assistant coach Matt Greenberg. Their message stuck with him, and he believes wrestling at F&M provides him, in conjunction with his fellow first-years, a tremendous opportunity to not only grow individually and as a class, but to help grow the program as well.

“I thought it would be a good opportunity to come in and do something for the program,” Bailey said. “It was an opportunity for myself to grow along with the program because obviously no one is as good as they need to be when they first get here. I though it was an opportunity to grow with the team.”

“We actually talk about it a lot [outside the wrestling room],” Bailey said of the program’s future. “It will be cool when we’re seniors, and I mean no disrespect to the current seniors, juniors, and sophomores, but knowing we’re such a big class and we can get so much better, we talk about when we’re seniors how we’re going to kick butt.”

Off the mat, Bailey is following another one of his father’s life paths: medicine.

“I’m a premed focus,” Bailey said. “I’m glad they didn’t let me pick my major right away because I would have picked physics. Now I think I may want to switch to chemistry. It’s always good to get the first few courses out of the way to find what you’re interested.”

“Definitely,” Bailey added when asked whether or not his father’s involvement in medicine influenced him. “Since I was little, my dad has always been a doctor and him doing surgery has always intrigued me. Some people get queasy; I don’t.”

His reasons for pursuing medicine are

“The fact that…it’s really just helping people. It’s not even saving people, but just giving people a better life,” Bailey said. “You know, fixing knees so they can run and stuff like that. As an athlete, that’s important to me because I don’t what I would do if I couldn’t compete. Just helping people participate in athletics or when they get older helping them stay in shape.”

When he’s not on the mat or hitting the books, Bailey leads a relatively relaxed lifestyle. Ever since winter break when the wrestling team was on campus largely by itself, he has noticed the first-year class becoming closer all the time.

“After winter break, [the first-years] became really tight and we hang out a lot now,” Bailey said. “We play video games, go see movies, and just hang out. We play a lot of Madden.”

Whether it’s as a team doctor or a coach somewhere, Bailey has aspirations to remain involved with wrestling for a long time after he graduates. He seems unsure of what form his involvement will take, but he hopes it will be significant.

“I would love to coach a local high school team,” he said. “I would definitely love to get involved, maybe through medicine. Not sure what path I want to take in medicine, but we’ll see.”

It took him awhile, but Bailey finally came around to wrestling. Perhaps it took a little nudge from his father to finally dive right in, but at the end of the day, Bailey couldn’t be happier that he did.

Beyond the Mat - Paul Alessandrini

Most people remember a specific moment or a long lasting influence that steered them towards the sport they chose to play. Whether that is a passion or spontaneous moment of inspiration, this moment usually prompts a moment that lingers in the back of one’s mind for the rest of his or her life.

For Paul Alessandrini, wrestling just seemed like the best sport for him, and he was introduced to the sport at just the right time.

“When I was like five year old, I played football and my dad was my coach,” Alessandrini said. “When I stopped playing, I never liked basketball, so I picked wrestling, and here I am.”

“When I was a child, I always had too much energy and I enjoyed being really physical. So I made that into a sport and wrestling was what came out of it,” he added.

To Alessandrini, wrestling just seemed to be the natural choice. It appealed to his slightly reckless, high-energy personality. Whatever sport he chose had to contain some element of aggression as an outlet for his always running motor.

Alessandrini’s father also played a critical role in his athletic development, coaching him in multiple sports for years.

“My dad was always my coach from football to little kid wrestling,” Alessandrini said. “He was always a big influence and always pushed me through it. He never forced me to do anything, but he always kept me going.”

“He was always a great coach and was always a great dad. He was always there for me.”

Even though Alessandrini experienced some early success as a wrestler and his dad encouraged him every step of the way, he never thought he would be a division one wrestler one day. That isn’t to say Alessandrini never dreamed about it, however; as he noted, thinking and hoping are two unique emotions.

“Thinking I was going to be one and dreaming I would be one are two different things,” he said. “I always wanted to be one…I used to watch the counties and the states on TV and always dreamed of being there.”

If it was unlikely that he would wrestle at the college level, it was even more unlikely that Alessandrini would end up at F&M. Prior to one of his club wrestling coaches reaching out to head coach Mike Rogers and assistant coach Matt Greenberg, Alessandrini had never heard of Franklin & Marshall.

“My club coach…I wrestled for him for two seasons…he was there for me,” Alessandrini said. “During the recruiting process, he contacted F&M. He contacted a lot of schools. I finally got a chance to talk to Coach Greenberg going into my senior year and we just clicked.”

“Initially I had never heard of F&M,” he added. “As soon as I talked to Greenberg, I started doing my research and yeah, they didn’t look that great, but I started talking to coaches and Rogers and they convinced me that this was going to be the start of something new and something good.”

After being contacted by F&M’s coaching staff, Alessandrini did his research and was a bit skeptical after seeing the records the program had assembled the previous few years. Like many of this year’s freshmen, however, Alessandrini was sold on the message both Rogers and Greenberg pitched when he spoke with them: This was his chance to make a true, lasting impact on the program, unlike any other mark he could leave on any other program.

“I think it was just the message that this might be a struggling division one program, but we’re really putting our best foot forward to make this a better program,” Alessandrini said. “Their whole message about making this a legitimate program is what really drew me in.”

AlessandriniAlessandrini considers each member of the class to be entirely unique, with wrestling as the string that connects them and holds everyone together.

“We’re all a bunch of individuals,” he said. “If you put us all in a room and took wrestling away, we would have nothing in common. But we do have one thing in common and that is that we want to make this wrestling program relevant again. I think this is going to be a really good team someday.”

Despite his optimism, Alessandrini’s collegiate wrestling career did not kick off with a bang. After tearing his labrum, he has struggled to get back on the mat, missing a large majority of the season. He claims this weighed on him more mentally than physically, as he always had to keep his shoulder in mind.

“I definitely didn’t think this was my best season. I tore my labrum last season and I am finally getting it fixed on March 9,” Alessandrini said. “I’m just looking forward to next season.”

“It was less not being able to wrestle and more not being able to wrestle to my potential,” he added. “Mentally, being outmatched during some matches really didn’t help when I was thinking, ‘don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t put your shoulder in this position.’ It was a drain on the season.”

Off the mat, Alessandrini remains a sports junkie. He claims, despite his history with football, he would be a lacrosse player if wrestling wasn’t his calling, and he enjoys watching all types of sports with his father and his friends whenever he has the opportunity.

“Wrestling takes up quite a bit of time. In general, when I say I wrestle all year round, I really mean it,” Alessandrini said when asked how he occupied his free time. “Other than wrestling, I enjoy watching sports, playing other sports, and I live on the water and enjoy that an the outdoors.”

“I’m a little short to play football in college,” he added. “But I’ve always loved lacrosse. If there wasn’t wrestling, I would probably be playing lacrosse.”

Even though the freshman has several years to sort out his goals and aspirations, Alessandrini aims to follow in the footsteps of his father after graduation, which would not surprise anyone who knows him.

“My Dad, my grandfather, and my uncle, they all work on Wall St,” Alessandrini said. “It’s kind of leading me to finance. I’ve always wanted to follow in my dad’s footsteps in everything he does. He’s always been a huge influence on me, whether it’s been athletically or in the professional world.”

Itching to get back on the mat, Alessandrini has few goals for his collegiate career: Graduate with a good reputation, have good friends, and become an All-American wrestler. Perhaps little different than what most of his colleagues aim to accomplish during their time in college, but Alessandrini was adamant that, above all else, leaving his mark on the wrestling mat was what mattered to him the most.

There was little hesitation in his voice, and his eyes confirmed the seriousness with which he simply, abruptly, and passionately laid out his short list of collegiate goals.

“I definitely want them to remember me as a division one All-American,” he said. “I don’t care if that sounds bad, but that’s what I want most. I want to be an All-American. I want to graduate with a good group of friends both in and outside of the wrestling team.”

He sat back and smiled; it is clear Alessandrini is rather simple and, above all else, he is committed to the team and his teammates. Few things, if any, will get in his way as strives to achieve his ultimate goal.

Alessandrini, All-American.

“That would be a good enough name for me.”