Keep Moving Forward: Resurgent Kent State Opens its season with the “Intrasquad” on Saturday

(above): One of Ohio's top three seniors last year, Dustin Kilgore (formerly of Berea High School) adds his considerable talents to the Golden Flashes program this year. Photo Credit: Bob Tuneberg, Villager News.

Over the last decade, the performance of the collegiate teams in Ohio as a whole has been- in a word- disappointing. While there have been a few consistent shining stars-  Findlay and Ashland University in Division II come to mind-  as a whole, the collegiate programs in the state has underachieved relative to the talent that exists in this state at the high school level. However, that seems to be changing, as programs such as Kent State, Ohio University, Heidelberg, and Ohio State have seen a resurgence.

The “regime change” in Columbus in March of 2006 brought the spotlight directly onto the Ohio State program, where it has stayed, as Coach Tom Ryan has enjoyed success after success in his brief tenure.  However, the Buckeyes’ neighbor to the north, Kent State University has quietly been building a great future for a program that was ranked top 20 last year and defeated tOSU for the second consecutive year.  Ohio Wrestling Site caught up with Head Coach Jim Andrassy on the eve of the team’s annual “Intrasquad” match.

OWS: Coach Andrassy, last year, the Golden Flashes brought in ten recruits who had finished in the top three in the state, including eight state finalists and five All-Americans, led by “blue chip” recruits Dustin Kilgore and Brendan Barlow.  The team defeated Ohio State in the dual for the second consecutive year and finished 15-3 in dual meets and 4-1 in MAC meets, with the lone loss to powerhouse Central Michigan.  You return three NCAA Qualifiers in Dan Micheff, Jermail Porter, and Kurt Gross.   Perhaps most encouraging is that your recruiting class was ranked 10th in the country by www.intermatwrestle.com.  Do you feel the program is headed in the right direction?

Andrassy: Yeah, I think all of those points stated indicate what direction we are headed. In addition to last year’s recruits, I think we‘ve got some pretty good “verbals” that I cannot officially comment on, but I think we are in a position to finish with a top recruiting class again this year.

OWS:  What will it take to take the next step, from a very strong dual team and top MAC squad, to a national power?

Andrassy: Well, you know, I think we are going to have a good team again.  But, I think a lot of people in Ohio and around in the country haven’t considered us because we haven’t had an All-American in awhile.  You look at Ohio State, and they had a pretty dismal dual meet season but had four All-Americans at NCAA’s. What’s better, a strong dual meet team or All-Americans? I don’t know.  Our administration wants us to have a great dual meet team.  Their other main concern is us catching Central Michigan and winning the MAC.  But I think, as a program, we must make the next step, from thinking that 15-3 in duals and contending in the MAC is pretty good, to thinking about All-Americans and NCAA Champions.  That’s the step we are looking to take.

OWS: Tough question for you coach…..obviously, with the success of the new regime at Ohio State, there is a lot of focus on the internet on what they are doing.  Do you find Ohio State is almost a “barometer” or find yourself comparing your program to what they are doing in Columbus?

Andrassy:  That’s a fair question, but….if OSU is concerned about Kent State they’re worried about the wrong thing, and vice-versa.  We have to focus on what we are doing.  Yeah, I get on the websites and see everyone talking about Ohio State.  Is it frustrating?  Of course.  We’ve beaten them the last two years.  Yeah they brought in great freshman, but they are still just freshman with something to prove like every other freshman.  I think we’re doing the right things here.  You have to remember, in terms of our budget, we’re a mid-level school, we don’t have the financial resources they do.   A school like Ohio State has a huge budget.  But, I would think, from what I can see, that OSU is doing all the right things right now too.

To be honest, we are focused more on Central Michigan than Ohio State.  We want to beat them, our administration is very focused on beating them and winning the MAC.  To do that, we will have to be a top ten team in the country. 

OWS: Coach, over the last decade, Central Michigan has not only dominated the MAC but has been far more successful than any other team which does not hail from a Big Ten or Big Twelve School.  They are in a similar situation as Kent State in many ways- from a resources standpoint.  Do you ever look to their success as something to follow?

Andrassy:  No doubt about it.  I think Tom Borelli is the best coach in the country.  What they’ve managed to do, on their budget….the seniors he has on his team were not even a ranked recruiting class when he brought them in.  Now they are one of the best teams in the nation.  He’s developed those wrestlers.  If they were in the Big Ten or Big 12 they would probably take ten guys to NCAA’s every year.  In the MAC, if you get upset, you don’t get too many second chances.  I would love to see what Borrelli could do with the budget of a Big Ten School, though I don’t think he will ever leave Central Michigan. 

When I see someone successful, I’ll be honest, I try to mimic what they do.  Our goal is to catch Central Michigan, and when we do, we will probably be a top ten team in the country.

OWS: The amount of young talent you have stockpiled greatly exceeds that of your predecessors at Kent.  In fact, I cannot ever recall so many talented young wrestlers heading to Kent State as last season.  What has been the key to your recruiting success?

Andrassy:  One of the things we really try to do, well, there’s a few things we do that others don’t.  We handle our recruiting a lot different.  The personal time recruits spend with the staff is a lot more.  We don’t just bring them in, send them off to parties, hope they have a great time and want to come back.  We take them to practice, we take them to the Saturday morning lift.  Almost to the point we try to scare kids on a visit.  I want it to be realistic, I want them to see that they are going to work.  If a kid wants to go here for the parties, maybe that’s not who we want.

OWS: That’s a great point.  Coach, what are the biggest mistakes you see young wrestlers making in their training or approach to the sport?

Andrassy: One of the things, when you compare the Ohio kids to a Pennsylvania kid like a Nick Bedelyon, he’s pretty well rounded in every position.  He’s going to be very tough on top and he can get away.  Most Ohio kids, even the good ones, have no idea how to ride or how to get off the bottom.  You can’t blame the kids, you have to blame the coaches and the officials.  Stalling is called too quickly on top, especially at the state tournament.  Last year in the state finals, Kilgore got hit for stalling on top.  That changed the way he had to wrestle the entire match- he had to cut Roddy.  Most high school wrestlers are so poor on top coming into college, it’s almost tough to even get them up to par in five years.   Coming out of high school, as a state, we have the best kids in the nation.  We excel at Fargo and at Senior Nationals every year.  

When I was wrestling I wanted to be on top, I wanted to crank the guy with the legs in, but not many Ohio kids seem to want to do that, or know how.  But what state has the most All-Americans ever year in college?  Pennsylvania.  I’d love to get 10-15 kids from PA, because they wrestle on the mat.  One of the best Ohio wrestlers I have seen over the last ten years was Jake Percival.  On top, he would beat you down to the point you didn’t want to wrestle any more.  He was very good on his feet too, but where it really all started from was the top position, he beat you down from there.  I saw him more than I wanted to.  But there aren’t many who have the approach that he did.  At this point, can you blame the wrestler? I don’t think so, he was probably never taught to do it correctly.   A perfect example, if you watch even Dustin Schlatter, his state final his senior year, he was working on a technical fall, my thought was why didn’t he just get on top of the kid and tilt him and get the tech fall?  It was like he was so obsessed with dominating on his feet that he overlooked that he could do that.   Now, in college, he’s great improved in his riding and he’s a lot like Jake (Percival) was, only at an even higher level I guess you could say.  Probably Minnesota really got him to work on his riding his freshman year.

OWS: Coach, you mention that you would like to have a lot of Pennsylvania wrestlers.  However, I notice that you have almost entirely Ohio wrestlers on your roster.  Is it your philosophy to recruit almost strictly in Ohio? Or is it some other factor, like the difference between in-state tuition versus out of state tuition?

Andrassy: That’s the answer.  In-state tuitition is $15,000 vs. $25,000 for out of state.  If you give an out-of-state wrestler a “half-ride” that still leaves $12,500 left to pay.  A kid can walk-on to Edinboro and pay $13,000.  If you give an Ohio wrestler a half-ride he will only have $7,500 left to pay.  As a coach, you have to have a strategy and do your homework, you can package things together and get someone academic scholarships and maybe see what you can get them in need-based financial aid.  We have a kid we are recruiting right now, between his financial aid and his academic scholarship, we can get all of his tutition paid and use less than 10% of a ride.  You try to find “needy” kids almost.

OWS: Let’s talk about the Intrasquad match on Saturday.  By my count there will be no less than eighteen former Ohio State finalists involved in this Intrasquad.  First, when and where are these wrestle-offs going to be held?  

Andrassy: The Intrasquad will be at Satuday (November 3rd) at 7:00 p.m. in the Kent State Fieldhouse.  This match will follow up the “Confrontation at Kent”, an open tournament that high school and youth wrestlers can and should compete in.  There are teams coming in from all over Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia for this tournament, so we will have eight mats running, maybe even ten.   The facility can hold 20 mats.  Those who wrestle in the tournament get a reduced admission for the intrasquad.
(OWS Note:  Entry form can be downloaded on Ohio Wrestling Site at: http://www.ohiowrestlingsite.com/forms/kent.pdf)

OWS: Sounds like a top-notch event. Back to the Intrasquad, can you take us through each weight?  (OWS Note: The full lineup of matches for the Intrasquad is listed below)

125- Nic Bedelyon (B) vs. Brian Dean (G)
133- Dan Mitcheff (B) vs. Clayton Stark (G)
141- Adam Haas (B) vs. Jordan Baldwin (G)
149- Drew Lashaway (B) vs. Jeremy Depoy (G)
141/149- Thomas Windom (B) vs. Marcel Clopton (G)
149- Clint Sponseller (B) vs. Patrick Lanham (G)
157- Ross Tice (B) vs. James Myers (G)
157- Sli Bostelman (B) vs. Kurt Gross (G)
165- John Pycraft (B) vs. Obie Simpson (G)
165- Nick Dierkes (B) vs. Kyle Haddox (G)
174- Chris Estep (B) vs. Greg Heinz (G)
184- Eric Chine (B) vs. Dustin Kilgore (G)
197- Ryan Buckner (B) vs. Michael Blackwell (G)
285- Brenden Barlow (B) vs. Jermail Porter (G)

Andrassy:  One thing I really want to emphasize, these aren’t wrestle-offs.  Wrestling is way too long of a season to decide who is starting right now.  The purpose is more to highlight our team.  Everyone gets a chance to wrestle.  We also use it as a fundraiser for our program. People get obsessed on the forums with “who beat who”, but really, I could care less how Clint Sponseller does against Lanham in this wrestle-off.  I want to see how they do at the Oklahoma Gold, the Penn State Open, and the Southern Scuffle- when it matters.

OWS:  Speaking of Sponseller and Lanham at 149, I noted that Jake Kyle (2006 state champion from St. Paris Graham) is not wrestling, can you tell us why not?

Andrassy: Jake had his gallbladder removed recently and will be out for about a month.  He is probably the frontrunner at this weight when he returns.  

OWS: What can you tell us about the match at 125 between Nick Bedelyon (a true freshman from Pennsylvania who was nationally ranked at 119 last year) and Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary’s state champion Brian Dean?

Andrassy:  I think Nick right now is a little further ahead because he is more well-rounded.  I actually think that Dean’s best position is in the top position.  I think that Nick is one of our hardest workers.  He does all the extra “little things.”  He’s known  (Assistant Coach) Josh Moore since he was a kid, they are about the same size and they spend a lot of time working out right now.

OWS: How about 133, a battle between Danny Mitcheff (state champ from Elyria) and Clayton Stark (state runner-up from Lakewood St. Edward)?

Andrassy: They went round and round last year, as far as the starting position, when Danny had finally committed to the weight- it was a real good match last year.  Clayton’s done a very good job for us and this should be one of the more entertaining matches.

OWS: How about 149, where Drew Lashaway (state champ from Eastwood) meets Jeremy Depoy?

Andrassy: Lashaway always starts slow at the beginning of the season, but I think he’s done the right things in the off-season in terms of conditioning, and he can start a lot further ahead.  Jeremy’s come a long way since he’s been here.  He is dropping from 149 and this weight should serve him well.  They wrestle in the room and it’s a very good match. 

OWS: How about the battle of true freshman state runner-ups at 157, Ross Tice vs. James Myers?

Andrassy:  That’s a match we are going to use to possibly bring someone out of redshirt.  Also, we will send both to the Michigan State Open.  Myers and Tice, they’re both pretty good kids.  Whenever you bring a kid out of redshirt, it keeps them focused.  If I could wrestle all of our kids as true freshman year I would.

OWS: Really?  That’s a lot different than the philosophy of many programs which seem to prefer to redshirt a wrestler their freshman year!

Andrassy: Yeah, it’s kind of a philosophy I’ve developed from my coaching experience.  I think when a kid redshirts they often say “yeah, I will just worry about that next year” as far as developing weak areas and things like that.

OWS: Is the issue with redshirt freshman a “lack of structure”?

Andrassy: No, not really that, because we are pretty structured in how we do things.  But I think, in the back of their mind, maybe because they know they’re not wrestling.  When you’re redshirting, you kid of have a different mentality.  The sense of urgency maybe isn’t there, it can be the last thing a kid is thinking about.  However, if you wrestle a freshman, they are traveling with us, they are weighing in with us, they are getting a sense of what collegiate wrestling is all about.  Especially because, after the early opens, there aren’t a lot of opens.  We started an open (in January) in part to give our redshirting guys something to train for.

OWS: It almost seems the redshirt year would be helpful later in a career? 
Andrassy:  That’s our philosophy.  If Dustin (Kilgore) wanted to, we’d wrestle him instead of redshirting. We’ll take him to the Southern Scuffle “unattached” and the opens.
 
OWS: Why are Myers or Tice going to be brought out of redshirt when you have defending MAC Champion Kurt Gross?

Andrassy: Kurt Gross is ineligible for the first semester.  Not for GPA, but because he doesn’t have his 80% of credits towards a degree requirement met.
 
OWS: How about 165, where Ohio state champion John Pycraft meets, North Carolina State transfer Obie Simpson?

Andrassy:  That should be an interesting match.  I haven’t got to see much of Obie wrestle as far as matches….  I don’t put too much stock in the room.  He’s also ineligible the first semester because when he transferred he lost some credit.  He transferred from NC State where he placed 3rd at the ACC’s.  From everything I’ve seen, Obie is our guy right now.  Johnny, he was hurt last year and didn’t get to wrestle.  He’s struggled with his weight.  We’re struggling with the issue of doing all the right things all the time.  We will know more after the Intrasquad.

OWS: How about 174, where Chris Estep (of Collins Western Reserve) meets Greg Heinz (of Painesville Riverside)?

Andrassy:  Right now, I would think that Estep has the upper hand.  Chris is very dedicated.  He was a state runner-up as a junior, then broke his leg as a senior but was ranked either #1 or #2 in the state.  His body has really changed since high school, meaning he looks like a college athlete.  He was probably our most successful redshirt freshman wrestlers last year.  With Greg, we have some other issues, we are trying to get him to change his style from high school and he hasn’t wanted to.
 
OWS: The match I am looking forward to the most is 184, where nationally ranked Eric Chine meets dynamite freshman Dustin Kilgore of Berea High School…what are your thoughts on that match?

Andrassy:  I think that Chine is just a little better than Dustin right now.  You look at Dustin, it’s hard to believe he’s an 18 year old, kid, he has the body of a 25 year old man.  With Dustin, his entire life is dedicated to wrestling.   Eric is just a little better than him technically right now.  Dustin still has some bad habits he needs to correct.  There is a learning curve with Kilgore, he’s going to be very good, and sooner rather than later.  To watch him work in the room, he only has one speed, that speed is full go.  It almost puts a smile on your face to watch him.

Eric, he has just done a real good job for us. I couldn’t be more proud of how he’s developed.  We don’t have the recruits that Ohio State does, we have to develop these wrestlers.  With Chine, maybe the thing that has held him back is his mentaility, not thinking he can compete with them.  He beat some real good guys at University’s and I think that was a big step for him in believing he can beat these guys. 

OWS: What happens next year, when Kilgore is off redshirt and Chine is a senior? 

Andrassy:  Next year, one of the two will go to 197.  I don’t know which one…. We will worry about that next year.

OWS: Finally, at heavyweight you nave state champion/national runner-up Brendon Barlow vs. NCAA Qualifier Jermail Porter……

Andrassy: Let me back up and talk about Porter.  He started wrestling as a sophomore at Firestone.  He probably had 75 matches in his career.  With Jermail, he’s still trying to grasp the sport, what you need to do in the sport.   People thought I was crazy when I recruited Barlow.  But my thinking was that (insert here)

Also, with Barlow, he’s one of the hardest workers, he will push Jermail.  Last year, we had a kid who didn’t really know how to push Jermail or just didn’t. Now, Jermail will have to come in every day and know Barlow is going to push him. There is nowhere to go for Brendon, in his mind he will have to beat Jermail.  Nothing less will be acceptable for him. Jermail will know he has to do everything he can to keep the starting job.

OWS: Coach Andrassy, what matches or tournaments do you have “mentally highlighted” for this year?

Andrassy:  The Southern Scuffle….I also love the Virginia Duals because it’s just a real good atmosphere. We have five guys right now that have either been to the national tournament or should have been there.  Eric Chine, he beat eight guys who were at Nationals. Lashaway beat Jaggers.  We tell guys, at these tournaments you need to beat as many guys as you can so you are ranked, that way, if you finish 2nd or 3rd you will go to the national tournament.  In Chine’s situation, he was ranked as high as #12 in the country during the season.  He was ranked #18 going into the MAC’s, took a 3rd, and they didn’t take him. I thought it was a mistake but I’m just one of six coaches.  The key is to get our guys ranked early in the year, and just progress as the year goes on. These five guys I feel real comfortable with, the other five guys will have to step up and progress as well.

As far as specific matches, Ohio States is coming to our place on January 4th. Last year I was pretty disappointed with the crowd they had, given all the noise you hear on the forums about them.  I hope we will draw 5000 for our match with them this year if they are as good as everyone says they are. 

Of course, the match with Central Michigan February 22nd- that will really tell us where we are at.  I’m hoping we can start the season like last year, where we finished strong at the Southern Scuffle and got ranked nationally early.   Then we will move right into our conference-match schedule.

OWS: Coach Andrassy, thanks for taking the time to talk, I look forward to seeing the Intrasquad on Saturday!

Andrassy:  Thanks, see you there.

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