TOGETHER AGAIN
Spartans' Simmons brothers dominate again in college as they did as preps in Michigan
Their act calls for a nickname but the Simmons brothers from Michigan State want no part of one.
“We’re our own people,” said Andy, the Spartan’s 141-pound wrestler. “We don’t want to be referred as anyone else. We don’t have a nickname or a gimmick. We just do our own thing.”
“We just wrestle hard and want to win,” said older brother Nick, who also provides a spark as MSU’s 125-pounder.
An
d even though Nick, 22, is 16 months older than Andy, both are listed as sophomores for the Spartans. That’s what happened when Nick, who finished seventh in the nation in 2003, returned to the Michigan State line-up after taking an Olympic redshirt last season.And for the first time since the Williamston, Mich., natives competed on the Williamston High School team in 2001, the Simmons are wrestling together again and creating almost as much havoc as they did in high school when both wrestlers won four state championships and posted unbeaten records. Nick was 210-0 while Andy was a bit better at 219-0.
They were nearly as perfect in the recent Midlands tournament where neither Spartan had allowed a point in reaching the finals. Nick maintained his dominance in the championship, where he blanked Iowa State’s Grant Nakamura, 10-0. Only Andy’s 4-2 tiebreaker loss to Iowa State’s Nate Gallick in the 141-pound finals in Evanston, Ill., dampered what has been an exceptional year for the brothers, who first learned their craft at the ages of four and five from their father, Scott.
“He would bring in other people to work out with us,” Andy said. “He evoked a certain style like going hard the whole time. It’s evolved over the years.”
“They are both very creative wrestlers,” said Michigan State coach Tom Minkel. “We work a lot on fundamentals but at the same time their creativity is fun to work with. They are marvelous at taking situations, where as a coach, you say, ‘No, no, no’ and then they do something great.”
That happened in Andy’s 2:59 pin of Max Meltzger in their Midlands semifinal match when it appeared that the younger
Simmons was in trouble.“He’s a brute,” said Nick of his brother. “He wants to come at you and fight you; almost like a street match. He’s going to go out there and it’s going to be physical.”
And in most cases the Simmons will flatten their opponents. After Midlands, Andy led the team with nine falls, compared to six by Nick.
“They aren’t just trying to beat you. They’re trying to pin you,” said Minkel, who pointed out that Nick scored falls (either by pin or technical) in 178 of his 210 victories in high school. “They are always dangerous and get you a lot of extra points.”
“Nick is dangerous and unorthodox,” Andy said. “You never know where he’s scoring from and can score a lot of points. Before you know it, it can be 10-0 and it’s 30 seconds into the match. When you wrestle him, you can’t pick up what he does because he does all sorts of stuff. He does whatever is available.”
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