Beyond the Mat - Eric Norgard

In a lot of ways, Eric Norgard is just like any of the other wrestlers on the F&M wrestling squad. Hard working, intelligent, and charismatic are all words and phrases that aptly describe Norgard.

At the same time, Norgard is definitely one who marches to his own beat, preferring to stand out as an individual rather than blend in with the rest of the crowd.

“I’ve kind of always been [an individual],” Norgard said. “When I got here as a freshman, I think that really started it, at least here. I always had my friends on the team, but I also always had my friends on my hall. If I ever needed to get away from it all [wrestling], I would just go hang out with them. But I don’t always need to be around people, and I actually enjoy it a lot sometimes.”

As a wrestler at F&M, Norgard has appreciated the simpler things that have come with being a wrestler. When asked what his favorite part about being on the team was, his answer essentially amounted to simply loving the fact he had the opportunity to wrestle after high school.

“I guess that I can say that I’m a division one wrestler, which really carries a lot weight,” Norgard said when asked what his favorite part about wrestling was. “I’ll be able to say that for the rest of my life.”

As the sole junior on F&M’s roster, Norgard will be in the unique position soon of being the only senior on the squad. Although being the only senior on the team next year will likely be a role that comes with a great deal of responsibility, it hasn’t fazed Norgard. In fact, the thought hardly ever crosses his mind.

“I haven’t really put a lot of thought into it yet,” Norgard said. “When I was a freshman, we had a class of three and the other two dropped out. It’s just something I’ve become used to. I don’t see it as a, I don’t think I’m supposed to be the one to set all the examples for everyone, I think I will, but it’s just not something I’m going to think of like that.”

Perhaps the reason behind Norgard’s calm, comfortable approach to his future role with the team comes from the support he already receives from the coaching staff.

“I think he’ll handle [the responsibility] well,” assistant coach Matt Greenberg said when asked about Norgard’s upcoming role with the team. “He’s not someone I ever have to worry about not showing up. He’s always there, always doing what you tell him. As far as an example of what you need to do or how you need to do it, there’s nobody I’d rather have doing that. I think he embodies what it take to balance everything.”

“I think he’s the perfect person to have if you can only have one senior.”

It didn’t take long for Greenberg to figure out what he had in Norgard. Ironically, that moment occurred during Norgard’s freshman year and involved him making a mistake rather than excelling on the mat or in the classroom.

“His freshman year, we went down to North Carolina for a match,” Greenberg said. “After we went through skin checks, he thought he had weighed in, but forgot he hadn’t weighed in officially. He sat down and started chugging a Gatorade. I said, ‘What are you doing? You can’t drink, you haven’t weighed in yet!’ He was three pounds over by the time he chugged his Gatorade, so he had to lose that weight in like thirty seconds.”

“He ran sprints and he was doing all kinds of crazy stuff [to lose the weight],” Greenberg continued. “Seeing him do all that, I knew this kid was legit. I knew he really wanted to make it work and he made it. He got out there and wrestled. Most kids would have been like, ‘Aw, I screwed up, I’m done. I can’t wrestle.’ He made it work though. I think that kind of embodies the kind of kid he is.”

“It was actually apple juice,” Norgard said, grinning as he began recounting the story. “I just started drinking and didn’t think anything of it and then I had this moment of sheer panic in the locker room and thought, ‘What did I just do?’ I started jump roping thinking I was going to lose the weight in two seconds. As soon as I realized that wasn’t going to work, I just found the nearest garbage can and, well, you know.”

This is just one of many examples of Norgard’s dedication to the wrestling team. He has developed a very personal bond with the program, and is thrilled to see it thriving in head coach Mike Rogers’ second season at the helm.

“It’s going to be weird next year because I’m going to be the only person who was here before Rogers so I’ll be the only one who has seen just how far this team has come,” Norgard said. “At the end of the year last year, we won four matches in a row. And this year, we have so many freshman doing incredible things just stepping on the mat for the first time at the college level. So I’m excited for the rest of the season and for next year, but once I graduate it will be crazy to see how far this thing can go.”

Off the mat, Norgard’s maintains his status as being a little different than almost everyone else. He has grown up loving the beach and the water, and has a tattoo of the beach. With a house on the Jersey Shore, Norgard has plenty of opportunity to get his fill of the water.

“[The beach] is definitely my place, where I like to be the most,” Norgard said. “Wrestling and surfing are just my two favorite things in the world to do. It’s the best.”

Although the junior doesn’t have to focus on what his life after college will be like for a little while, Norgard has a general feeling about what he would like to pursue after his collegiate career is over.

While emulating his father is towards the top of the list, Norgard is unsure about whether or not he wants to follow step for step in his father’s path.

“My main goal would be to own my own company and to work for myself,” Norgard said. “My Dad kind of does that now, he’s the vice president of his company. He worked his way up to get that job, he’s been at the same company for thirty plus years now. I don’t know if I’d like to start at the bottom like he did though.”

“I just gotta come up with that next great idea.”

An unassuming kid, it can sometimes be easy to lose Norgard in the crowd. But he’s anything but invisible when he steps on the mat or is in the locker room. There’s a reason Greenberg said if he could only have one senior next year, Norgard would be his guy. With all of his accomplishments, positive character traits, and his general attitude towards just about everything, it is easy to understand why Greenberg feels this way about Norgard.

While he certainly doesn’t blend in with any crowd, Norgard certainly fits in with just about everyone, the hallmark of an adaptable leader who can relate and connect with everyone around him.

Although F&M will be downsizing numbers wise in terms of senior leadership next season, the wrestling program will be in good hands.

Anatomy of a Coach - Matt Greenberg

What makes a great coaching tandem? Is it discipline? The ability to relate and connect with athletes? Possessing the aptitude to fully understand and comprehend the X’s and O’s of a sport? What about fundraising for a program or recruiting? Or, like a special recipe, is it some complex combination of all of the above, plus a little something extra?

Being the perfect coach at any level of competition is hard enough. What makes it even more difficult is finding that perfect complement—the assistant coach. The next two articles will take a look at head coach Mike Rogers and assistant coach Matt Greenberg to see what makes them click. In this two part series, the goal is to uncover what makes them so good at what they do and to discover why they work so well together. The following is part two in the series.

“I felt like I could make more of an impact here than selling sponsorships or chasing money,” assistant coach Matt Greenberg said when asked why he chose to come to F&M. Those who have worked for both the MLB and NBA and had begun to carve out a spot in an advertising firm don’t generally leave their jobs to become assistant wrestling coaches at small colleges in Pennsylvania. But to say Greenberg is just like most guys would be both inaccurate and shortsighted.

After he graduated from Cornell, Greenberg went to New York University to get a degree in sports marketing. Following his education, he had little difficulty finding some initial success in the field. After working for both of the aforementioned professional sports leagues, Greenberg went to a private company to help manage all of its sports advertising.

Although Greenberg’s early career path was one that many college graduates would give their eyeteeth to have, it still didn’t feel quite right. Even though he was certainly leaving an impact in the professional world, it wasn’t the type of influence he was hoping to have.

And that’s when he ended up in Lancaster.

“Andy Noel, who is the athletic director at Cornell and an F&M wrestling alum, said [F&M was] looking for an assistant coach,” Greenberg said. “I had missed wrestling incredibly doing what I was doing. So I said, ‘You know what? I think I’d be happier doing this.’ I interviewed and was able to make all the arrangements necessary.”

“I made the choice to come here and I think it was one of the best decisions I ever made.”

It was a roundabout way to get into coaching, and although it took him a little while to come full circle, the urge to get back into wrestling in some capacity and to have the opportunity to provide young men with a little guidance was just too much to pass up. At F&M, Greenberg has the chance to leave a mark on the development of all the wrestlers who compete in a Diplomat uniform, which is more rewarding to Greenberg than almost anything else.

“I’d be lying if I said that was all I cared about because we want to be successful as coaches,” Greenberg said. “We want to build this program. But [wrestling] changed my life and if we can do that for others…I don’t know. I don’t know where I would be if I didn’t wrestle. I don’t think I would have been at Cornell. Seventeen or eighteen-year-old kids, they don’t know what they’re doing. They change their minds fifty times. If you can be there for them when they need help and kind of teach them not to make mistakes or do the things you did right and were rewarded for, that’s what it’s all about.”

“I don’t have kids, so these are my kids. These are my brothers and my boys that I have to take care of.”

For Greenberg, wrestling has certainly left a meaningful impact on his own life, which is one of the biggest reasons he continues to remain so passionate and invested the sport. It opened doors for him that he believes would never have been opened otherwise, and it provided him guidance at times when it would have been very easy for him to fall off the bandwagon and get caught up in something that didn’t contribute to his future.

While it would probably be misleading to say wrestling was the only guiding light over the course of his adolescent and young adult life, he talks about it as if it were. The drive to succeed and the demanding nature of the sport itself kept Greenberg in line, and he credits the sport with helping him stay in line.

“I think wrestling kept me on track,” Greenberg said. “If I didn’t wrestle, I don’t know if I would have been as focused. It just kept me really grounded and it kept me focused on staying a good person and working towards my goals and accomplishing things that I set out to do. I was a little bit of a crazy kid, I was not an angel by any means. So I think that wrestling and being around a program that was really on the rise, I think really being a part of that helped keep me focused and on track to be successful in life.”

“It was my life, it was all I cared about,” Greenberg added. “Outside of my academics was being a good wrestler and accomplishing my goals. I was surrounded by people who had the same goals as I did so I didn’t want to be the one who didn’t get to go to the party. I wanted to be at nationals every year, I wanted to be an All-American, I wanted to be part of a championship team. I was given all of those opportunities at Cornell.”

Cornell has been perennially ranked in the top ten since Greenberg competed there, and it is one of the programs other schools around the country look towards when seeking a role model to base their rebuilding squad on. F&M is one of those schools, as the Diplomats are working to become relevant in the wrestling world.

Greenberg has worked with two head coaches since he arrived here at F&M, the current one being Mike Rogers. Rogers, who was an assistant coach at American, another wrestling powerhouse, before he came to F&M has found almost the perfect working partner in Greenberg. Their personalities match up together flawlessly, with both of them relying on one another to help complement their own respective strengths and weaknesses. It’s quite a tandem, with Rogers looking at Greenberg almost as like a co-head coach.

“Working with Matt has been great,” Rogers said. “He complements me in things I may be lacking skill wise, he more than makes up for them. And then things he may be lacking in I’m strong in. So we have a set of skill sets that complement each other and work well with one another. Whether it was by fate or by design, it worked out.”

“[Greenberg] is a good sounding board for me. Sometimes I get a little too ramped up about a lot of things,” Rogers continued. “I like to be very organized where everything has its place and I like very calculated ways of doing things, which I think is good, but you also have to be willing to deviate and relax a little bit on some things and go in a different direction. I think he does a good job of bounding ideas off of me.”

All one has to do is sit in the wrestling office for ten minutes and the chemistry between the two makes itself obvious.

“We’re like the two brothers from Step Brothers,” Rogers quipped. “We’re always joking.”

But while Greenberg is the perfect counterbalance to Rogers on a personal level, the contributions he makes to the well-being and the future of the wrestling program are invaluable.

“He relates really well to our student athletes and he does a great job recruiting wise,” Rogers said. “I think the biggest impact he’s had has been the recruiting part of it. He can pick up a phone and talk to a kid about any topic. Whether it be music, or school, or shoes. I think I do a good job with the parents. I think I can understand where the parents are coming from. He looks at it from the kids’ point of view, and he does a really good job reaching out to them.”

Now that he’s here, Greenberg wants to mold the program into one that commands respect from its opponents. However, beyond garnering success and awards on the mat, he hopes the wrestlers that make their way through F&M’s program continue on to become successful people after college, hopefully developing a positive name and reputation for the program.

“Five years down the road I want this program to be solid as far as every year we’re bringing in a solid group of recruits, that the program is thriving as far as success on the mats, and we’re bringing in kids who, when they graduate, they’re going into the real world and being successful. They’re going out and they’re getting the internships and they’re getting the jobs. Hopefully our fundraising increases because the people who come through here are graduating and becoming very successful.”

“I hope that when you think F&M, I hope you think of wrestling five years from now,” Greenberg continued. “The same way you think of Duke you think basketball. I hope one day when you think of F&M you think of wrestling and you think of successful alums and we have people all over this country being successful in life.”

While producing wins and recruiting All-Americans and, hopefully, one day competing for a national title on a consistent basis are all things that are important for Greenberg, how the wrestlers that come through the program develop as students and as young leaders is just as, if not more, important.

Greenberg had a very successful wrestling career. He spent a summer training for the Olympic qualifiers. There are plenty of athletic successes he could draw upon as being the best memories he has from wrestling.

But that’s not the reason he’s here at F&M. It’s not the reason he left the marketing world to be an assistant coach at a small liberal arts college that, when he first got here, didn’t have much to speak of when it came to wrestling. No, it’s definitely not the athletic achievements that drove Greenberg to return to the sport and motivates him today to work so hard with the guys on the team.

For Greenberg, wrestling is a way of life, and it contributed to his own in so many ways that have nothing to do with athletic prowess. Rather, it is the life lessons he has learned that have made him love the sport so much. While winning championships and being the best on the mat is certainly a priority, it’s not the only one, nor is it the primary one for this coaching staff.

No, wrestling is a sport that teaches its participants about life and how to be successful. This is what drew Greenberg back and as long as he can help the 17 and 18-year-olds who walk through his office door become better men through the sport, it’s safe to say Greenberg isn’t going anywhere.

For Rogers and the entire F&M wrestling community, that is something everyone has to be excited about

Anatomy of a Coach: Mike Rogers

What makes a great coaching tandem? Is it discipline? The ability to relate and connect with athletes? Possessing the aptitude to fully understand and comprehend the X’s and O’s of a sport? What about fundraising for a program or recruiting? Or, like a special recipe, is it some complex combination of all of the above, plus a little something extra?

Being the perfect coach at any level of competition is hard enough. What makes it even more difficult is finding that perfect complement—the assistant coach. The next two articles will take a look at head coach Mike Rogers and assistant coach Matt Greenberg to see what makes them click. In this two part series, the goal is to uncover what makes them so good at what they do and to discover why they work so well together. The following is part one in the series.

Currently ranked seventh in the nation, American University has built quite a reputation for itself. With the top-ranked heavyweight in Ryan Flores and a host of other talented, experienced wrestlers, American would be any wrestling coach’s dream job. Established success, resources, and talented wrestlers. Is there much else a coach could want?

Head coach Mike Rogers used to be a part of that. As an assistant coach at American University only a few years ago, Rogers was an important member of program that was rebuilding and establishing itself as a national power in the collegiate wrestling world.

But, despite its recent success, American was not always the place to be. In 2003, just eight short years ago, American closed the doors on its wrestling program for almost six months. With little funding and general support from the school, the program was floundering, succumbing to the pressures and demands of being a division one program while trying to survive on a limited resource pool.

There was not a whole lot to celebrate and there was even less hope on American’s campus.

“[Ex-American head coach] Mark Cody was very helpful for me because he had a very similar experience with American University eight years ago,” Rogers said. “When he came in, they had one or two scholarships and they dropped the program before he even got there. He left Oklahoma State as a top assistant to take a very low paying job in an expensive area of DC and he was able to build that program up to the point where it was finishing with the top teams in the NCAA and winning division one coach of the year.”

“When I talked to him, looking at the two situations, you have more to start with than I did,” Rogers continued. “So that gave me a lot of comfort.”

What Rogers is referring to is what helped convince him to show up in Lancaster in 2010. When F&M first called Rogers, it featured a floundering program that can’t give out scholarships, doesn’t sport world class wrestling facilities, and didn’t have a reputation as a premier wrestling institution. For as many struggles as F&M had when Rogers first set up shop in Lancaster, Cody, now the head coach at Oklahoma, clearly believed Rogers would have an opportunity to succeed as the head coach of the Diplomats.

Neither Cody nor Rogers ever believed the rebuilding project Rogers was going to have to undertake when he arrived at F&M was going to be easy. Trying to convince top of the line wrestlers to attend a small, expensive school that doesn’t give scholarships is a difficult task. However, that doesn’t mean Rogers is shying away from the challenge.

“When he walked in it was like the slow-motion entrance from She’s All That,” assistant coach Matt Greenberg said. “Jennifer Love Hewitt walks into a party and everything slows down. When he walked in, I knew he was the guy. I knew that was the guy I wanted to work with and learn under. He came from a great program. His strengths and his ability to lay out a plan to show you what he’s expecting from you have made me a better person and a better coach.”

Thanks to many of Rogers’ gifts as a coach, F&M has a bright wrestling future. Those close to Rogers and those who know him well don’t have too many doubts regarding his ability and are confident he will turn F&M into a contender. Rogers and F&M wrestling will be successful in the future, and that’s important to him. But to say that’s all that matters would be to ignore much of what Rogers is about as a person.

Going back to when Rogers was considering whether or not accept the position of head coach at F&M, he placed a great deal of emphasis on how coaching at F&M would fit in to his family life. Luckily for the wrestling program, it fit in quite nicely.

“I think the thing that really sealed the deal for me was that my wife was able to find a job locally,” Rogers said. “I was able to get my family back together. I was driving from Lock Haven down to D.C. twice a week. It was taking a strain on the family, particularly with two young kids.”

“So I think that the opportunity to coach a division one program, that was appealing,” Rogers continued. “But I liked the location and talked with some people and there’s a lot of help, there’s a lot of people here for support. I knew it was going to be a lot of work, which doesn’t scare me at all, but I wanted to know there was support for the program. And the deal sealer was my wife was able to find a job.”

Now that he’s here, F&M and the surrounding community has left its mark on Rogers and, at least so far, the job has turned out to be everything he could have asked for. However, as his time here continues, he is hoping to have an equally significant impact on the school itself. What Rogers brings to the wrestling room is a realization that a school doesn’t need to have all the nicest equipment and dozens of scholarships to make it to the top. He should know; for almost his entire wrestling career, Rogers has been a little bit behind everyone else.

Although he was born in Iowa in the heart of wrestling country, he spent the majority of his childhood growing up in Florida where wrestling is a low priority on the sports totem pole. Football is king down south, and like most other kids growing up in The Sunshine State, Rogers began his athletic career on the gridiron. Ironically, it was an experience he had with football that made him turn to the sport that would stick with him for the rest of his life.

As he stepped onto the football field as a freshman in high school, the head coach looked at him and told him to head back to the locker room. In this particular Florida town, only upperclassmen got a shot at the varsity squad. If Rogers wanted to play football his freshman year, it was going to have to be for the JV team.

Not having the shot to at least go out for the varsity squad irked Rogers, and it drove him away from the sport for good.

“My freshman year, I remember going out for the football team and they told me I had to start on JV,” Rogers said. “I kind of had a discussion with the coach and said, ‘Well, I want to go out for varsity.’ He said freshman play for JV, and I said, ‘Well I don’t want to try out for JV.’ Granted, I was probably only 110 pounds soaking wet at this point, but it really bothered me that I didn’t have the opportunity to try out or compete on the varsity team.”

“So I kind of walked off the field,” Rogers continued. “As I was walking off, the assistant coach saw me and asked where I was going. Now, he had happened to take over the wrestling program recently and said, ‘If you’d like to go out for wrestling then you can wrestle. If you win the spot, you can wrestle for varsity.’ I thought that was very fair. So I went out, won the spot, and got to start.”

Rogers’ career as a wrestler did not start off with a bang. He admitted that, as a freshman starting for the varsity team, he didn’t exactly dominate on the mat.

“I struggled my first year, I got beat up,” Rogers said of his first year as a wrestler. “I only won three or four matches, but I spent the summer really getting better and won more and then eventually won the state title.”

The one constant that has been present throughout Rogers’ career both as a wrestler and as a coach has been his dedication and hard work. He was just the second person from his family to graduate from high school and the first to go to college, and he lived a very blue-collar lifestyle growing up with his father and helping out with the family business.

This work ethic helped mold Rogers into the person he is today and, at the time, it helped turn him into a successful wrestler who loved the sport.

“I grew up working construction and putting up fences,” Rogers said. “My dad owned a fence company and I would wake up in the morning, put up a fence, go to school, go to practice, go work in the shop, and that was my day.”

As the first person to go to college in his family, Rogers didn’t have much to go on during his college search, but he ended up in Pennsylvania at Lock Haven. The opportunity to attend a school that appreciated wrestling was to big draws for Rogers when he had the chance to visit the campus.

“What I really liked, and why I ended up in Pennsylvania, again going back to how the sport’s not very, there not a lot of appreciation for the sport in Florida, so I really wanted to go somewhere that embraced wrestling and really knew what goes into wrestling,” Rogers said. “Wrestling was really important to the whole school and the whole community.”

It was at Lock Haven where Rogers, from a wrestling standpoint, really learned that, in order to be successful at the sport, a team doesn’t need state of the art equipment, a bunch of high school All-Americans, or a brand new wrestling specific facility. A bunch of really good guys and a place to practice is all Rogers and his team at Lock Haven needed to leave its mark on the wrestling world.

“We achieved things with minimal resources, equipment, and all this stuff people claimed you needed to be successful. We didn’t have it,” Rogers said. “Bringing that experience [to F&M], I’ve realized you don’t need the best wrestling room, you don’t need all the coaches in the world, and a budget where you can fly everywhere. All that stuff helps, it makes life easier, but I still think it can be done.”

“You just need a bunch of good guys, a wrestling room, and a good schedule. And that’s what we have [at F&M].”

Throughout his entire experience as a wrestler and his time spent as an assistant coach at American, Rogers has picked up countless lessons that have helped guide him to the point he is at now. What his job is now is to make an impact on F&M using all these lessons and insights he’s gathered over the years.

While Rogers wants F&M wrestling to be successful and he wants the team to have All-Americans, he realizes that achieving success on the mat is not the sole purpose of his job.

“Everyone wants have All-Americans and national champions,” Rogers said. “That’s obviously important. But even more importantly, we need to develop young men to be strong leaders. We need to bring in kids with the right character and then we mold them and shape them into responsible leaders who are going to go out and do great things. I think if you do that, the All-Americans and the champions will come.”

“I think if we go out and try and find the best athlete regardless of what kind of person he is or what kind of student he is, I think he can become an All-American, but he washes out of school,” Rogers added. “Our goal is to have All-Americans, Academic All-Americans, and national champions on the mat, but within the perspective of the overall experience here.”

“If we have guys graduating here and getting good jobs out there in the world and becoming leaders, then I’d say I’ve left my mark.”

Even though Rogers has not yet been the head coach at F&M for two years, one can feel the culture of the program changing. The wrestlers have bought in to what Rogers is selling, and it shows. They’re all equally invested in what they’re doing on the mat as well as in the classroom and outside of F&M’s walls.

Rogers spoke a lot about how wrestling makes one accountable to himself, how it demands the best out of someone and how a wrestler has no one to blame but himself when things go wrong. His wrestlers seem to have embodied that in every facet of their lives, owning up to their athletic, academic, and professional performances.

When Rogers first set foot on F&M’s campus, he inherited a program unsure of its future and one that lacked the necessary hope to get itself turned around. Now that he’s here, that’s all changed. It’s hard not be excited about what’s going on in the wrestling room in the basement of the Mayser Center or on the mat in the gymnasium on match nights.

From the outside, F&M’s turnaround may be somewhat surprising. However, if you poke your head into the office at the top of the stairs of the offices in the Mayser Center, you’ll likely see a coach hard at work. And if you get a chance to speak with him, then anything surprising about F&M’s turnaround melts away.

Hitting the Road with F&M Wrestling

I knew nothing of wrestling when I first arrived at F&M. My small high school of just over 300 kids didn’t have enough interest to support a wrestling program. It had been disbanded in the 1980s when the team couldn’t field one wrestler in every weight class. When the “thirds” soccer team fields three times as many players as the varsity wrestling squad, that’s when it is clear the time has come.

Because of this rather unfortunate state of affairs, I was eager to learn more about this sport. As far as I knew, the sport was more or less what my best friend and I did on “play dates” when we were six and seven years old. Any strategy, planning, or training that went into the preparation for a wrestling match was lost on me. It was a sport I would oftentimes hear about, but could never see.

To make a long story short, when I saw my first wrestling match as a sophomore at F&M, I was hooked. Unfortunately, I had chosen the final home match that year to be my first, so I had to wait quite awhile before I had the opportunity to watch another one. I went to every home match junior year, and it did nothing but increase the my interest in the sport. I started writing articles for The College Reporter, F&M’s student newspaper, and that eventually landed me this gig with the wrestling team at the start of my senior year. I had never seen a wrestling match two and a half years ago. Now I can’t get enough of it.

Still, something was missing. Because of F&M’s size, it cannot host any tournaments. There just is not enough space in the Mayser Gymnasium. When I agreed to write articles for the wrestling team throughout the 2011-2012 season, there was one article I really wanted to write. I wanted to chronicle the wrestling experience of being on the road and going to a tournament. Yes, I figured this would be an interesting article, but at the same time, I really wanted to hit the road and experience a wrestling tournament for the first time.

Below is a running diary. A blow-by-blow account of what happened on my first ever trip to a wrestling tournament when I tagged along with the wrestling program on their trip to the Navy Classic. I learned a lot about the sport and I hope that is reflected in my notes below.

Friday, 6:30 p.m.: I arrive at the Mayser Center, having sprinted from the library after printing out 75 pages of reading for the paper I have due Monday. I make it down the wrestling room and then move on out to the vans with the rest of the team. I hop on the second van in line, driven by Coach Greennberg. Matt Latessa, Matt Fullowan, Austin Glessner, Alex Henry, and Eric Norgard were in the van as well.

7:00 p.m.: We’re off! In two hours, we’ll be in Annapolis, Maryland for the Navy Classic. Having never seen the campus or the city of Annapolis, having the opportunity to see both was an added bonus for me. Prior to the trip, everyone kept telling me how beautiful both were, which only served to heighten my anticipation a little more.

9:00 p.m.: The team arrives at the O’Callaghan hotel. This being the first overnight trip I have ever taken with a sports team at F&M, I was a little unsure about what the accommodations would be like. I was definitely pleasantly surprised. Very nice hotel right in the center of the city. Couldn’t ask for much more.

Side note: Latessa made the interesting observation that, in general, the nicer the hotel, the worse the TV. Not that I was really watching any TV on this trip, but he’s right. Thinking back to my hotel experiences, the only time I have ever had a plasma screen TV in my room was when I stayed in a La Quinta in Andover, Massachusetts. Latessa is on to something here.

9:30 p.m.: I realize I have forgotten my phone charger. Surprisingly, this will end up being noteworthy.

10:30 p.m.: Lights out. With a 6 a.m. wake up call just around the corner, I wanted to hit the sack early. The only people in college I know who can wake up this early and not complain about it are the wrestlers. They work out this early almost every day. Thankfully, my 5:45 a.m. wake up calls for my summer job prepared me for this.

Saturday, 1:15 a.m.: Wake up call number one. Glessner, my roommate, instinctively wakes up and starts getting dressed. He is utterly shocked when I tell him that it’s only 1:15, and that he should probably go back to sleep.

3:30 a.m.: Wake up call number two. I answer the phone, and no one responds. Glessner never woke up for this one, and it’s a good thing I looked at the clock before waking him up. Back to sleep.

6:45 a.m.: After receiving no wake up call when we actually were supposed to, Glessner and I fly out of bed and race downstairs only to realize we have missed the team bus. Normally, I don’t trust wake up calls, so I always set my phone alarm just to be safe. I would have done so this time around, however, since I forgot my phone charger, my phone did not have enough battery to last through the night. If I learned one thing on this trip, it’s that all my skepticism when it comes to wake up calls is true.

7:15 a.m.: Glessner and I realize we’ll have to wait for the shuttle bus to get us to Navy. The first one is at 9:30, which will get us there just in time for the start of the tournament.

9:30 a.m.: No shuttle.

9:40 a.m.: Still no shuttle.

9:50 a.m.: No shuttle, but by now we have hailed a cab and are on our way down to the tournament.

10:10 a.m.: We arrive just after the national anthem. After finding the F&M wrestling crew, I finally have an opportunity to take in my surroundings. The Naval Academy truly is an awesome campus. The athletic center where the tournament is located has a glass wall overlooking the river and the colorful trees on the other side. Walking to the athletic center, I notice the beautiful stone buildings and the well-manicured grounds. It met the expectations I had set prior to the trip, based solely on the reviews of the wrestlers who had been there before. I’m just disappointed I didn’t get to see more of it. It really was the only disappointing thing for me the entire trip. I’d love to go back and take a tour of the campus, just so I can see everything.

Inside the building, a constant buzz is present. Four mats are set up next to one another, and there are four matches going on simultaneously. This is more or less how the entire afternoon went. Matches were going off in rapid-fire succession, with little time being wasted between them. Along with F&M, Navy, West Virginia, Bucknell, Gardner-Webb, George Mason, and The Citadel were all represented. I find a place to drop my stuff, and begin walking up and down the mats, taking everything in.

10:45 p.m.: I’m watching a match between the 125-pounders. One is from Navy and the other is from West Virginia. At school, when I am at wrestling matches, I am almost always with friends. While not a bad thing, most of them are there for friends and not for the match itself. As a result, when their friend isn’t actually on the mat, they spend more time talking than watching, which makes it a little tough to focus on the wrestling.

With nobody around to distract me, I notice for the first time just how much thought goes into each move. Disregarding the preparation that goes into every match before a wrestler even steps foot on the mat, I was impressed with how calculated each move was. It truly is a thinking man’s sport. Regardless of whether or not I was watching an F&M wrestler, I was enthralled by what I was taking in.

11:30 p.m.: Perhaps in part because I am naturally attracted to anything competitive, by this point in the morning I was enthralled by just about every match I saw. However, this wrestling thing is without a doubt leaving its impression on me. I have always been a football and basketball kind of guy, rarely missing any New England Patriots, Boston Celtics, or Duke Blue Devils basketball game. This is something I could definitely see myself following for the rest of my life.

12 p.m.: Admittedly, I am not sure if this is the exact time this event occurred, but it’s close enough. As I am wandering back and forth between mats, I always tried to keep an eye out for when an F&M wrestler is about to start wrestling. I noticed David Pucci is about a minute into his match. I squeeze myself in between two Bucknell parents, making the experience of watching Pucci wrestle Bucknell’s Doug Kellermeyer somewhat interesting.

Now, I am not one to feel embarrassed about who I am rooting for. After all, I have worn Red Sox jerseys in Yankee Stadium, Duke shirts at North Carolina Chapel Hill, and went to a Philadelphia 76ers-Oklahoma City Thunder game completely decked out in Celtics gear. I plan on wearing a Patriots jersey to the New England-Philadelphia game next week. With all this in mind, I had little trouble showing some excitement when Pucci won his first career match, despite standing amidst a throng of Bucknell fans.

Not only was it a good match, but also the look on Pucci’s face was priceless. Not in the really funny way, but in the that’s what is awesome about sports kind of way. It was raw emotion. I remember when Adam Vinatieri kicked the game winning field goal to beat the Rams in the Super Bowl in 2001 and I remember when Keith Foulke and the 2004 Red Sox broke the Curse of the Bambino. Seeing Pucci’s face was like that. For the people who know him, have talked with him, and understand what he is all about, this was a truly special moment.

1:30 p.m.: Break time. This was about the only ten or 15 minutes where the wrestling action stopped all afternoon. I’m sure everyone needed a bit of a breather, but I was personally itching to see some more wrestling.

2:45 p.m.: Colin Ely really is exciting to watch. He did lose in this particular match, but even when he was down with 30 seconds remaining in his match, I was convinced he was going to pull some magical move out from his arsenal and pin his opponent. I have seen him do it before, and although it didn’t happen this time around, he does it enough that you have to at least think it’s possible every time he steps on the mat. While the coaching staff may wish he was a bit more conservative at times, Ely is a fan favorite. Watching Ely wrestle is like watching Justin Verlander pitch or Aaron Rodgers play quarterback. At any give moment, something memorable might happen.

3:15 p.m.: Standing along the guardrail separating the fans from the mats, I realize I am suddenly surrounded by heavyweights. George Mason’s heavyweight is about five feet away, F&M’s Henry is standing right behind me, and Bucknell’s heavyweight is talking to his coach right next to me. At six feet two inches and over two hundred pounds, I generally consider myself to be a big guy. I’m not.

4:00 p.m.: Talking to Pucci about the tournament, he tells me he has wrestled three times within two hours. For starters, there has been so much going on all at once that I barely noticed he wrestled two other times. But, more importantly, I am very impressed with how well conditioned these athletes are. It’s one thing to wrestle once a night during a dual match. But to wrestle at least three times in one afternoon? I’ve run multiple marathons in my life and even I cannot think about how well conditioned one has to be to have sustained success in a tournament like this.

4:15 p.m.: F&M has four wrestlers in the fifth/sixth place finals matches, and they’re all on the same mat. How convenient.

5:30 p.m.: Although every wrestler in the finals had some memorable moments, watching Latessa was particularly thrilling for me. I noticed he likes to pick people up and throw them to the mat. George Mason’s Coriston Smith looked like the green bean bag chair in my room. To make it comfortable, I always pick it up and throw it to the ground, and then I just jump on it, usually ending up on my stomach. If it ever gets uncomfortable, I just repeat the process. Latessa’s match went something like that.

Later on, Henry pinned Hunter Manspile of George Mason to come in fifth. I was down on the floor to watch his match, and when the combined weight of Henry and Manspile hit the floor, I could’ve sworn a small earthquake hit Annapolis.

6:00 p.m.: We’re off. I had an awesome experience, and the tournament was everything I thought it was going to be. Even a little more, in some respects. I’m already eager to hit the road again, and I can’t wait until F&M starts wrestling at home so I can start going to matches on a regular basis again.

6:30 p.m.: For what seems like the umpteenth time since the trip started, Fullowan pulls out the, “You’re a wizard, Harry” line. I’m not sure how this fits in with everything, but he said it a lot, so it must.

7:00 p.m.: Most expensive Burger King trip ever.

9:00 p.m.: Back on campus. It’s been quite a trip. I loved every minute of it, and I cannot wait to go back. I’m already going over my schedule to find another road trip that works.

I may have never seen a wrestling match before I arrived at F&M, but I now feel like I’ve seen almost everything there is to see. I love what I see and, while I loved every moment of my high school experience, I can’t help but wish that I went to there back in the 80s. Then I wouldn’t have had to wait so long.