To celebrate the Sparta High School Wrestling Team making it to the state team tournament, there will be a firetruck parade around town this evening. (The wrestlers will be on the firetruck.) The firetruck will leave the back of the high school at 5:00, head down Montgomery to Water Street, head down Water Street to Wisconsin Street, and then head back on Black River Street to the high school. People are welcome to come and be part of the procession, or show up on the parade route to support the team.
You probably wonder why the Minnesota Gophers are featured here so often. A couple simple reasons: The Wisconsin Badgers do not promote their team or wrestlers at all like the Gophers do. Minnesota is one of very few that provide these videos and blogs on a weekly basis. I enjoy the Gopher style of wrestling. They are very aggressive and hard working. They make watching wrestling fun. (Oklahoma State is the same)
I have had the opportunity to attend camps and clinics at Minnesota, met their coaches and wrestlers, and over the years have had the following as clinicians or speakers at Sparta and our Leadership Camp: LeRoy Vega (3 times), Luke Becker, Tim Hartung (2 times), Brandon Eggum, Jared Lawrence, Mack Reiter, and others. They have all been very well spoken and presented messages about leadership and finding success in life through goal setting and hard work. WE have had wrestlers over the years attend J Robinson’s camps and come back much better wrestlers, on and off the mat. The Gophers are Big 10 Dual Champions this year also.
Quote from Joe Russel, coach at George Washington and former Minnesota Gopher assistant: “Wrestling is a tough sport physically and mentally. Often time people look only to the raw physical skills, technique, power, endurance. I love watching the mental part of the sport – the battle of wills. Who will back down first? Who will concede out of fear of failure, fear of fatigue? Who is willing to take a risk? What is the strategy used to win a situation? The sport can resemble a chess match at times. The sport can also look like an old fashioned gladiator battle. The sport is fascinating.”
One of the great things about wrestling is that you get to see and follow people like Anthony Robles.
Now is when the wrestling season gets exciting and all the work and preparation starts to pay off. The three videos this week deal with getting yourself ready to perform at your best and doing it with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm and hard work will almost always top talent alone. You have to enjoy competing and challenging yourself if you are going to be successful. Thursday is the beginning of some exciting matches to come. Have fun, wrestle hard and do it with passion. This song and video is about hardwork, overcoming adversity, pursuing your dreams and accomplishing your goals in life.
In this video the highlights are great and you can see the excitement and enthusiasm as the Gophers compete. Pay attention to Coach Robinson as he addresses the team before the dual. Some very good points.
I like Coach Smith and how he assesses a win and coaches his teams. It isn’t always how you win but weather you win or not. Ugly wins are still wins. You can watch his team defeat #1 Iowa on the Big Ten Network tonight at 7:00 PM. (He gave his team a C- for their performance….) Also some good references for our team has they head into an important dual with Holmen Jan. 19.
I thought I would give everyone a couple of movies to watch over the holidays. The first is a wrestling movie and surprisingly it does not have a lot of cheesy wrestling in it. It is actually very realistic and a good story to boot. Some of “us” old timers will relate very well with [...]
We’ve added a new feature this year that will include some fun highlights, technique videos and matches worth watching. To start off I’ve included a collection of all areas. The first is a highlight of wrestling in general and shows what a really great sport this is. I’ve also included a match between Jordan Oliver [...]
The Middle School wrestlers will head to Neillsville this Saturday for a team tournament and then to West Salem on Monday for a conference meet with Holmen, West Salem and Viroqua. The Neillsville tournament will follow a team dual format with specific weight classes. It should be a good experience for our wrestlers in dual [...]
What a great start to the wrestling season! Over sixty 6th through 8th grade wrestlers have started the middle school season. With the large number of wrestlers this season there will be some scheduling on the fly as we try to get enough competition for all. Our season opens up next Monday, November 14 at [...]
11:53am — Matt Tourdot closed out this year’s Senior Nationals with a victory by injury default over Kansas’ Kyle Caylor. His victory yesterday over New York’s Kyle Colling secured All-American honors for the second straight year. No Spartan has ever achieved high school All-American status before Tourdot and he has done it twice. On the [...]
