Not too many wrestlers can miss a semester of wrestling and expect it to have no effect. Wartburg’s Wil Kelly, the defending national champ, doesn’t expect it to be a big problem.
After spending two years at the Univ. of Iowa, and a year and a half at Wartburg, the 141-pound returning national champ has only one semester left of eligibility.
Both Kelly and Wartburg head coach Jim Miller believe that missing the first semester will have a minimal effect.
“I don’t think so,” said Kelly. “You can look at it a lot of ways, but basically I won’t miss a lot first semester.”
To make sure that he will be ready to go for second semester, he plans on doing lots of running, weight training and working out with different wrestlers in the area.
“Staying active is the big thing,” Kelly said. Miller has confidence in his senior.
“He knows what he has to do to be ready,” Miller said.
After taking third at the NCAA championships in 2002, Kelly entered last season with his sights set on a national championship. He entered the championships seeded fifth and went through some tough competition on his way to the finals. He defeated Jamell Tidwell of Augsburg in the quarterfinals before he defeated the top-seeded Kristopher Harrington of SUNY-Brockport, 8-2.
Though most of last year’s finals matches were close, Kelly had little trouble in defeating King’s College’s Jim Morgan, 7-1, to become one of three Wartburg national champs.

• The rest of this feature can be found in the W.I.N. Annual College Preview. To subscribe to Wrestling International Newsmagazine, please call 1-888-305-0606.



• The rest of this story appears in the Annual College Preview issue of Wrestling International Newsmagazine. To subscribe to Wrestling International Magazine, call 1-888-305-0606 or by e-mail at info@win-magazine.com. W.I.N. publishes 12 times per year for an annual second class mailing rate of $29.95. The first-class subscription rate is $47.95.