Old School Pinner Askren Adds Schalles Award to Collection
There are pinners and those that pin.
Both achieve similar results but the path each travels is vastly differently from the other . . . as are the thought processes that direct them.
Pinners react instinctively; it’s something that is wired into their infrastructure at birth. They know, maybe it’s that they sense that every time they wrestle, whether what they are feeling is true or not is unimportant, that anyone who steps on their mat is about to imitate a flattened frog lying on a highway.
It’s almost as if the fans can feel their muscles twitch when they notice an opening for a half nelson or sense their opponent’s knee is about to get within an arms reach of his head. Regardless of the situation — and here’s the biggest difference between a pinner and one who pins — it doesn’t matter if they put themselves in the position they are currently in or were unceremoniously dumped there by their opponent.
Pinners sense openings for back points from any position and when the timing is right, they pounce on them like a hobo jumping on a ham sandwich.
On the other side of the coin, the focus of those who pin is far more targeted and predictable. Spectators always know when back points are about to be secured with those that pin, which is just the opposite of pure pinners and why they are so embraced. Pinners do the unexpected, which puts butts in the seats and a smile on the face of every school’s fin
ance manager. Pinners are also creative and certainly innovative. Instead of counting sleep at night, they visualize unusual pinning combinations. Then lying in their bed they arrange themselves to match whatever screwball position they just envisioned. They use God’s gift of imagination and the discipline of mental rehearsal to develop an aptitude for pinning.
What made Gene Mills so much fun to watch? Why did people move from one end of an arena to another to watch Randy Lewis or point to whatever mat that kid from Clarion was wrestling on? How about Scott Moore from the University of Virginia two seasons ago? Wasn’t he fun to watch?
Have you ever thought why people loved watching those greats more than the rest of the country’s national champions? In one word, unpredictability. And if you throw in a floppy flaccid mop of hair, you have today’s king of mat-side marketing and this year’s winner of The Schalles Award: Ben Askren.
“Wrestling is boring if you don’t wrestle for all seven minutes,” Ben shared with me a day before living up to his promise of cutting his hair if he won this year’s NCAA tournament. “Opening up is the key to pinning people. I simply can’t stand around waiting for a takedown to occur. That’s craziness. So I go out and make things happen.”
Not particularly known as a pinner in high school, Ben had over 800 takedowns during his last two seasons at Arrowhead High School in Wisconsin. He still holds two state records for that skill, one for most takedowns in a season (401) and the other one spanning an entire scholastic career (1,037).
“I’ve found if you do things hard enough your opponent’s either stop wanting to fight or they become so frustrated that they make mistakes,” Ben continued. “That’s when I lock things up.”
At this year’s NCAA Championships, five wrestlers made those mistakes against Ben and as a result he was awarded this year’s Most Outstanding Wrestler trophy. It was a befitting end to an undefeated season that included an amazing 25 falls through a rugged Big 12 schedule.
What’s in store for wrestling fans in 2007? More Ben. He is back again to defend his title and while he definitely does not fit the role of the middle Stooge, the odds are good that the marketing folks at Missouri will ask their Larry Fine of wrestling to re-grow his locks.
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