Bryan Van Kley

If you didn’t have a chance to attend the NWCA Cliff Keen National Duals, Jan. 13-14, you missed a great event. As I’ve written in this column before, the event is truly one of the best of the year on the national wrestling calendar and overall a very fan-friendly event.

            There was one big detail overlooked for the second straight year: scoreclocks.

            The UNI-Dome where the event is held is very big, big enough to easily hold 18 wrestling mats on the full-size football field where Northern Iowa plays games. There were scoreclocks on each mat but they were the ones which didn’t show the team scores in addition to the individual match scores.

            It made the dual you were watching hard to follow unless you were close enough to see the old table-top flip scoring charts that you see used at little kids tournaments. You know the ones, they have red numbers on one side and green on the other where you flip a canvas number when each point is scored.

            I really respect the guys at the NWCA for how hard they’ve worked at building this event up. When the clocks didn’t have team scores last year, you wrote it off as a first-year detail that got overlooked in a new facility. But not two years in a row.

            A fairly simple solution if getting different clocks isn’t feasible, is to have an up-to-date running total of the team scores on the jumbo screen on the south end of the arena. They wouldn’t have to take up that much room on the screen if they ran side-by-side with the names of the competitors like they used it for this year. Or, you could rotate between the two screens.

Star pitcher Zito attends Duals  

            The National Duals also drew a Major League Baseball star into town for the event and the weekend activities. San Francisco star southpaw Barry Zito stopped by the Dan Gable International Wrestling Institute and Museum on the evening of Friday, Jan. 12 to meet with the Iowa assistant coach at the unofficial opening of the museum in its new Waterloo location.

            Zito also met with Oklahoma State coach John Smith earlier that morning. The California native, who was recently signed by the San Francisco Giants for 7 years and $126 million, is a new wrestling fan who came to Cedar Falls to meet the two wrestling icons and get some insight from them on their mental approach to sports and domination. The contract makes Zito the highest paid pitcher in the history of baseball.

            Staff writer Kyle Klingman and I were both able to interview the 2002 AL Cy Young Award winner at the Duals, so stay tuned in future issues for a more in-depth article on his thoughts of wrestling, as well as his impression of Smith and Gable.

Drama in the National Duals finals

            There were two very dramatic moves in the finals of the National Duals which caught fans’ attention. Missouri coach Brian Smith’s move of two guys up a weight class in the upper weights and Nebraska-Kearney heavyweight Tervel Dlagnev’s pin at 2:47 for the Lopers 20-19 comeback win for the title turned some heads. 

            Smith bumped Matt Pell (165 pounds) and Ben Askren (174) up a weight class against Minnesota in hopes of winning four of the last five matches to steal the title from the Gophers, who were leading 14-4 after C.P. Schlatter’s (ranked No. 8) gutsy 6-5 win over No. 14 Michael Chandler at 157.

            The Tigers did win the four matches they needed to win between 165 and 197, but didn’t get the bonus points needed to overcome the defending National Duals champion. Smith inserted redshirt freshman Nick Marable at 165. The young Tiger came through in only his second dual-meet start of the season with a 5-3 over Jeremy Larson, who was ranked in some other polls.

            Seniors Pell and Askren both won as well but the Tigers are used to bonus points from Askren (and Pell when he’s at 165). Pell made the nine-pound jump up to 174 and downed No. 13 Gabe Dretsch, 9-4, while Askren edged the second-ranked 184-pounder Roger Kish, 5-4. Ben’s top-ranked younger brother, Max, collected a six-point decision at 197 to give Missouri a 16-14 lead. But for the second year in a row, national champion Cole Konrad sealed the deal for the Gophers with a first-period pin.

            The other two Minnesota heroes in addition to Konrad were Manuel Rivera (141) and Kish. Rivera ripped freshman Ashtin Primus (No. 11), 18-7, to start a three-match run. Kish showed why he and Minnesota are so tough to beat, they just so rarely get out of position, even against a prolific pinner and the 2006 Dan Hodge Trophy winner. Kish nearly took Askren down in the first period and did get a takedown late in the match as Askren was trying to create some possible pinning positions.

            Dlagnev gave UNK their second Duals title in four years when the Loper senior put six team points on the board, one more than than their 1-80 rivals. Dlagnev is the real deal, but it is still tough to get a pin when all your opponent has to do is stay off his back. The top-ranked Dlagnev came through when the Mavericks’ Tony Lewis tried to throw the national runner-up and was pinned with 13 seconds left in the first period. Dlagnev was mobbed by teammates coming off the mat.

            And to think we still have two months of this stuff left! You have to love it.

            (Bryan Van Kley is the publisher of W.I.N. Magazine. He can be reached via e-mail at Bryan@WIN-magazine.com.)