By Jason Bryant, W.I.N. Columnist

You know that feeling you get when you’ve eaten one too many plates of turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes. That feeling that makes you gravitate towards the couch, put your feet up on the cushions — even though you’re not supposed to — and grab any fluffy pillow around? That feeling is a right of passage during this holiday season.

Sure we give thanks and many of us travel to see family and fight the holiday traffic while wrestling season is nestled up close to Thanksgiving and later in December for Christmas. This means not everyone’s going to have the “itis” after chowing down.

Thankfully (no pun intended) for those of us wrestling nuts, there’s wrestling to be had on the holiday weekend. Big props to those wrestlers who might have had a piece or two of turkey while keeping their weight down. Why? They gave us quite a show over the weekend.

In four of the past five years, I’ve been at a tournament or an event the Saturday following Thanksgiving. In 2004, my last night working the sports desk at the Daily Press in Newport News, Va., was Thanksgiving. The next morning, I was in a van heading to Lock Haven, Pa., for Mat Town. I also did the same trek in 2001. This year, Mat Town went off without me. It’s lost a bit of its luster after switching to an open format, but one thing that’s definitely filled that wrestling gap in our stomachs has been the Journeymen/Brute Northeast Duals.

So with a big travel weekend awaiting, Thanksgiving was relegated to my third year dining in the Philly suburbs and the house of my friend’s parents in Horsham, Pa. Highlights included a trip to the Horsham Inn and endless hours of Guitar Hero. I’d only played this twice before — including once at the All-Star Classic last year with Jake Herbert, Jarrod King and Matt Storniolo — all of whom dominate the game, and in turn, really should get out more.

So after trading off the “guitar” with my friend Nate and his younger sister, I stuffed myself and prepped for the upcoming trip to Troy … and thankfully the Black Friday sale at Best Buy ended up with an early Christmas present to myself: a GPS for my travels.

Frank Popolizio, brother of Binghamton coach Pat Popolizio, has put together a solid — very solid — event in New York that has continually grown the last five years. Last year, Hofstra surged into prominence after knocking off No. 1 Minnesota. This year, it was Maryland and coach Pat Santoro slaying No. 5 Michigan.

It’s not a tournament, it’s more of a jamboree of sorts. Fourteen teams wrestled on six mats at the well-kept Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, N.Y. The competition was just solid.

Frank is always looking to make the event better. He’s soliciting advice from coaches, fans, media, etc., to see what else he can do to improve it. Right now, he’s got the right mix of teams with national and local appeal.

Event announcer Bryan Hazard, the head wrestling coach at Robinson Secondary in the Fairfax, Va., area, constantly made note to the many Journeymen wrestling club members taking the mats for their respective college teams.

The way Frank is doing it reminds me of how the Virginia Duals started. Get the kids from the local area recruited to wrestle in college, then bring them back to wrestle in front of the home fans.

While that’s not Frank’s primary goal, it’s a by-product of a strong wrestling area, a strong wrestling club and a driven event director.

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