KUTZTOWN, Pa. – Team work and hard work are two commonly used terms athletes and coaches at all levels talk about at great length. But there's no escaping that those qualities are among the biggest reasons for the success of the Kutztown University wrestling team this season.
All season the Golden Bears have been crediting their run to the work going on behind the scenes on a daily basis in the wrestling room at practice.
“We've got something really special going on here,” head coach
Robert Fisher said. It's really hard to come by. We've got a real family atmosphere where these guys are thinking that even though the sport's individual, they're thinking 'Team, team, team.' So all my backups, all my starters, all my redshirt guys – they're all working equally hard for a common goal to improve.”
The hard work paid off more and more as the season went on. The team won its final seven dual matches of the year to reach double digit wins for the sixth straight year. Then at the NCAA Super Region I Championships, KU produced its best finish in 15 years, claiming third, and four Golden Bears qualified for the NCAA Championships for the first time since 2007.
Talk to any of the national qualifiers and they'll be quick to give credit to the team.
“I feel like I'm peaking at the right time,” said
Evan Yenolevich (New Tripoli, PA/Northwestern Lehigh (Edinboro)) (New Tripoli, Pa./Northwestern Lehigh), who won the Super Region I title at 133 and is one of two Kutztown wrestlers nationally ranked in his weight class. “My practice partners keep pushing me. My two practice partners,
Leonard Drummond (Easton, PA/Easton) and
Mitch Voelker (Shoemakersville, PA/Schuylkill Valley), they're not going to NCAAs, but they're still in the room giving me all I can handle because I need them. They're my team.”
Giovanni Ortiz (Reading, PA/Reading) (Reading, Pa./Reading), who qualified after advancing to the finals at 184, echoed that sentiment.
“The whole team has had this attitude toward the season – let's work hard and let's prove ourselves,” he said. “That's what we did essentially.”
Yenolevich and Ortiz will be joined at the NCAA Championships in Pueblo, Colorado on March 9-10 by teammates
Micah Bollinger (Mifflinburg, PA/Mifflinburg Area) (Mifflinburg, Pa./Mifflinburg) and
Brandan Clark (Audubon, Pa./Methacton) (Audubon, Pa./Methacton).
After transferring from Division I Edinboro, Yenolevich has been a force for KU all season. He enters his first round bout against Central Oklahoma's Dustin Reed (17-7) with a record of 24-5 and is rated seventh at 133. His win last week at in the Super Region I Tournament, where he had two pins on his way to the title, has him on the right path.
“After winning last week, it put me up on another level as a confidence booster,” he noted. “I didn't really give up many points. That was another booster, I didn't get taken down. It was all mental strategy to help me. A lot of wrestling is mental.”
He enters the national tournament in the midst of an 11-bout win streak and has also won 14 of his last 16. He has seven pins, five major decisions and three technical falls on the year for 15 bonus victories.
“Evan's just hot right now,” observed Fisher. “He's wrestling as well as he's wrestled all year and we're really excited. He's just in great shape.”
Both Evan and the coaching staff feel he could go deep into the bracket.
“He's really excited about the opportunity to not only place high, but win it,” Fisher continued. “He's looking to win. And we're looking for him to win as well.”
“As for next weekend, I'm just going in there with a strong mind,” Yenolevich added. “I won regionals and want to win nationals.”
Yenolevich and Bollinger jumped into the national rankings after their performances at the Super Regional. Bollinger, like Ortiz, overcame a No. 7 seed to advance to the finals. He will represent the Golden Bears in the 165 bracket at nationals.
Bollinger placed second at 165 despite the presence of a pair of former national championships in his division. The sophomore downed Mercyhurst's Josh Shields for the second time this season and fell to the tournament's most outstanding wrestler, Mike Williams of UNC-Pembroke in the finals.
Bollinger carries a record of 15-9 with eight victories by fall into his first round match up with the University of Mary's (N.D.) Taylor Nagel.
Coach Fisher does not see any reason why his success cannot continue at the national level.
“(In his) First semester wrestling for us, we couldn't have imagined anything better,” Fisher said. “It just took him a little while to get going with the season after not wrestling competitively for several years. Once he got going, he's really been tough. We're really optimistic we can come away with some hardware for sure at 165.”
At 184, Ortiz needed to overcome a slow start to even earn the seven seed at the regional tournament. But perhaps no one on the roster benefitted more from the team's blue collar approach.
“In my coaching career, I don't think I've seen this much of an improvement from the beginning of the season to the end of the season,” Fisher said of Ortiz. “It's just like night and day, he's gotten better in every single position, every single scenario and every scramble he's just improved. So there's no reason he can't come away and be an All-American.”
Ortiz himself recognizes that it is more important where he finishes than where it began.
“It was a slow start this year,” admits Ortiz. “I lost to several kids that I feel like if I wrestled them now, it'd be a totally different story. Throughout the year, it's been just building for regionals, so I wasn't hard on myself over those losses. I treated it as a learning experience and just kept working hard. Second semester I started turning it on.”
“About six matches leading up to regionals, I was just peaking,” he continued. “I knew I wasn't going to be seeded that high going into regionals and it didn't bother me. I told the coaches, 'It doesn't matter where I'm seeded. I'm going to make a name for myself.'”
Entering the national tournament, Ortiz is arguably the team's hottest wrestler. He has won 11 of his last 14 bouts and both of his pins and all but one of his major decisions have come in that span.
He will take on the University of Findlay's Adam Walters in the first round.
KU's final national qualifier could be its most surprising. On Jan. 28, Clark was injured during a match against Gannon and did not take the mat again until the Super Region I Tournament, where the true freshman placed fourth.
Again, it was the team's hard working identity that helped him recover quickly.
“Brandan's been a great surprise,” Fisher said. “Just over a month ago, he had knee surgery and had some time off, but it didn't affect him. He got back and he kept lifting through the surgery and rehab and worked real hard to get himself out here. It's nice to get here and anything else is gravy. It's good experience. We've got him for a bunch more years and we'll see what's going to happen.”
Clark entered the regional rankings at 285 during the year and stayed there throughout his time injured. He was rounding into form before getting injured and has now won five of his last seven bouts. Clark also has three pins during his rookie year.
His first round opponent is Francisco Retana of Colorado Mesa University.
The fact that only four Golden Bears are still in action has not thinned the crowd in the wrestling room, where just days before Yenolevich, Bollinger, Ortiz and Clark head west, the room was as crowded as any day in the preseason as the rest of the team tries to help them achieve their ultimate goal.
“That's what's been really unique, the family atmosphere we have, the caring about one another,” Fisher noted. “And, even though we're in individual season, as you can see today we have a full room and people who are working hard and helping each other out.”
Yenolevich agreed with that sentiment.
“We're a team. We're tight. Everybody in there, we're family, we're friends, we're teammates, we're everything.”
