OT: Pitt v WVU wrestling
- Thread starter RaleighPittFan
- Start date
37-3 beat down!!
How and why did the Hoopies forfeit in 2 weight classes, I don't know much about wrestling, so can someone explain how this happens? They don't have anyone at that weight or what?
One didn’t make weight and one had a medical issue and was ruled out.
Back in the day you made weight one way or another including wearing a rubber suit and excercising prior to weigh-ins in a small hot room, spitting in a cup for hours, or making sure you made that last trip to the restroom prior to weigh-ins.
Thankfully for wrestlers and their families those days are long gone. If you're not close to wieight near weigh-in time you might not make weight.
Today rubber suits are outlawed and can't be anywhere near the team or in the wrestling facility.
The article below explains the "making weight game" in detail including the loss of water weight hours prior to a match.
Many wrestlers back in the day made weight ( weighed in) at the lowest weight class possible gaining back 10 or more lbs in the hours prior to wrestling. Having the option to wrestle at a lower weight come tournament time depended on how many times you made that weight and wrestled at that weight during the season.
It was a dangerous game but everyone played it to be competitive.
http://www.ncaa.org/champion/wrestling-away-troubled-past
One technique that a doctor discovered for wrestlers who were close to weight, when our kids wrestled in HS was to stand on your head in the weigh in room next to the scale and get on the scale immediately which could give a wrestler an eighth to a quarter lb lower weight reading which could make the difference.
I have no idea how it worked but it did. I saw wrestlers miss weight by a fraction, do the stand on their head thing and barely make weight seconds later.
In HS I played football at 175lbs. and wrestled 141lbs and I chunked up a little for football didn't have a lot of fat to lose.
A day prior to a match, I'd lose close to 10-12 lbs, cutting back food to pieces of meat, mostly water weight and gain that back within hours after weigh-ins. Some my actual wrestling weight was in the 150lb range.
Weigh -ins were usually hours prior to a match with a wrestling official present.
I never had to wrestle off in HS after the intial wrestle offs since there was no one close to beating me at my weight class but the kids who had wrestle offs week in and week out had to be close to their weight prior to weekly wrestle offs.
I can remember on the day of a match after school sitting in the HS boiler room in a rubber suit with other wrestlers trying to drop 5 or so lbs to make weight later that night for the match.
When I wrestled in college I skipped a lot of the weight losing stuff and wrestled 168lbs. To many other things to do like drink beer.
It's a good thing for the sport of wrestling they straightened this out since it was a health issue and lots of wrestlers really pushed the envelope with dropping weight.
The skin things is a huge point of emphasis today as weigh in officials examine a wrestlers body during weigh-ins for any hint of skin disease. Top HS and college wrestling programs have a sophisticated mat and practice facility cleaning program to prevent skin disease which could shut down a program. Hot wrestling rooms and mats are in incubator for skin diseases.
Skin diseases spread like wild fire and there were some real nasty one going around PA wrestling circles back in the early 2000's.
Most wrestlers today shower after practice at the school gym and come home and shower again using various anti bacterial products.
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I can tell you that today kids in high school are still wearing garbage bags under their clothes, carrying around spit cups, in steam rooms etc. We just hired a kid a few months ago who has sweet cauliflower ears and sweats profusely once it gets over like 73. We laugh about his sweating, but it’s pretty sad that his body is that jacked up now because of it.
Herpes and more importantly drug resistant strep are no laughing matter.
I cringe even thinking about this.
Back when I went to Pitt, Mike Johnson, who was an All-American, wrestled at 123 lbs. (Today that weight is 125, but the weight classifications have changed over the years). In the off-season, he probably weighed between 150 and 160. But, at 150 he used to challenge FB players who outweighed him by close to 100 pounds to wrestle him in the dorms. For money. Usually just a few dollars. If he didn’t pin them in under a minute, they won. I never saw him lose. In fact, he generally would take them down in the first 10-15 seconds, inflict some pain on them (something he enjoyed) and then pin them in the last 10 seconds. Wrestlers are a special breed.
He had no problem losing the weight to get to 123. You could see him starting to shrink as the season got closer. But, there were a number of wrestlers on the team who had real problems making weight. I remember when I was covering wrestling for The Pitt News, one wrestler telling me that 7 guys on the team were wrestling at weights below what they should have been wrestling. I’m glad they don’t push guys to lose the kind of weight they used to.
Fenstermacher is the Pitt transfer who didn’t make the weight at 125 for WVU. It was surprising because he wrestled at 125 against Cornell and Northern Iowa in their earlier matches. We beat them by a much more lopsided score than either of them, and Cornell is ranked in the top ten nationally. But, Cornell didn’t wrestle most of their best wrestlers against WVU. It isn’t uncommon in wrestling. One year, we wrestled Missouri the night before they were to wrestle WVU back when WVU was a better program and had two of the Jones brothers on its roster. Missouri wrestled mainly backups against us and still won handily. Then they beat WVU with their starters the next afternoon.
We should enjoy this lopsided win while we can. I don’t think Tim Flynn came to WVU after many successful years at Edinboro to be a patsy.
He had no problem losing the weight to get to 123. You could see him starting to shrink as the season got closer. But, there were a number of wrestlers on the team who had real problems making weight. I remember when I was covering wrestling for The Pitt News, one wrestler telling me that 7 guys on the team were wrestling at weights below what they should have been wrestling. I’m glad they don’t push guys to lose the kind of weight they used to.
Fenstermacher is the Pitt transfer who didn’t make the weight at 125 for WVU. It was surprising because he wrestled at 125 against Cornell and Northern Iowa in their earlier matches. We beat them by a much more lopsided score than either of them, and Cornell is ranked in the top ten nationally. But, Cornell didn’t wrestle most of their best wrestlers against WVU. It isn’t uncommon in wrestling. One year, we wrestled Missouri the night before they were to wrestle WVU back when WVU was a better program and had two of the Jones brothers on its roster. Missouri wrestled mainly backups against us and still won handily. Then they beat WVU with their starters the next afternoon.
We should enjoy this lopsided win while we can. I don’t think Tim Flynn came to WVU after many successful years at Edinboro to be a patsy.
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Was Fenstermacher from Northhampton PA?
You appear to be from the same wrestling era a me did you ever remember Mike Frick ( I was older than him but knew him from AAU wrestling) he wrestled in the 123- 136 range and won a number of PA St Chanpionships?
He went on to wrestle at Lehigh and won a NC.
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When our kids wrestled in HS in the early 2000's ring worm and impetigo were the dreaded skin diseases.
What you mentioned was just appearing as another skin disease threat.
Our HS mats were very clean but mats at other HS sometimes were a disaster.
When our kids came home from a wrestling match or practice they went straight to the shower to take another shower with skin anti bacterial stuff.
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anon_vmuicqnzlyp3u
Guest
I know this drill all to well. My Sophomore year I would play football at 180 and then wrestle 138 and Districts, Regionals at 132. There were times where I wouldn't eat for days and only drank small amounts of water. It was really out of control when I wrestled. I am glad that they have changed all of that. Finally in my Jr and Sr year I started to get recruited for football and wrestled 185 and sometimes heavyweight but that was many many years ago.
That's why in college I said screw the losing wait thing and wrestled 168 which meant I only had to lose 10 lbs which was easy.
I like the higher weight wrestling syle better, more minutes on your feet, upper body stuff (lateral drops, cement jobs, whizzzers, rolling cement jobs, bear hugs to trips, throws ) like AAU Greco Roman style wrestling which was my favorite in the summer.
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anon_vmuicqnzlyp3u
Guest
Again, know this all to well. Wrestled all summer doing just that. Greco and Freestyle. It really helped me a lot with football. I could have wrestled in college but like you i thought " eat 7 calories a day or 7000 a day. " Good memories
These great posts, brings back memories, but for me a non wrestler.......memories
of a very different sort. When playing basketball in h.s. we shared part of the
locker room with the wrestlers. This was the area where we hung up our practice
uniforms. We had to be careful when we went in there, because the wrestlers
would often be in there...they turned the heat up to God knows what. It was
like a sauna in there. They'd sit there in their rubber suits playing cards. They
usually made fun of us when we went in there and called us wimp
basketball players. We knew better than to mess with them. LOL
of a very different sort. When playing basketball in h.s. we shared part of the
locker room with the wrestlers. This was the area where we hung up our practice
uniforms. We had to be careful when we went in there, because the wrestlers
would often be in there...they turned the heat up to God knows what. It was
like a sauna in there. They'd sit there in their rubber suits playing cards. They
usually made fun of us when we went in there and called us wimp
basketball players. We knew better than to mess with them. LOL
Wet sweaty cards because the rubber suits would fill up with sweat and drip out the wrists and ankles.
Fun?????????????
I new I was bound to be a wrestler when early on it took be 5 mins to make a layup and shot jump shots off the top of the backboard.
I always looked them in those nice cool shorts and t shirt practicing while I was jogging the perimeter of the gym in my rubber suit.
I have aq somewhat similar story! When I was a Sophomore at Pitt I lived in Tower A with my buddy from high school (actually more lit and Larry Swider (the Pitt Punter!) Matt thought that Larry could beat me in an arm wrestling match. I don't know why he was so gung-ho to has us arm wrestle, but he bet my roommate $50.00 (a hell of a lot of money at that time!) that Swider could take me. We started right handed, and I pretty easily beat Swider. But, Swider was left-handed so Cavanaught bet my roommate $50.00 more that I would lose! Well, I had a little harder time left-handed but still took Swider pretty easily. I wrestled in high school and always went to Trees to lift at Pitt but I never thought I could so easily beat a Pitt football payer in arm wrestling. Needless to say, my roommate and I drank a lot of good beer that semester thanks to Cavanaugh and Swider.(Don;t get me wrong...both Matt and Larry were great guys, but I was still the arm wrasslin' winner!)
