NAIA championship
- Thread starter slammin74
- Start date
149 finals match had two grand view kids going against each other and it ended with a defensive pin!!
It was cool to see Isaac Bartel (Mason City) and Evan Hansen (Exira/Elkhorn-Kimballton) in the finals at 197... both looked solid as hell. I wonder how they could have done at the D1 level.
NAIA is always confusing, wrestle an entire season and then Nationals contain teamates?
Congrats to Josh Wenger, whose defensive pin against his a teammate won another title. Believe hes won it twice now, former CRP prep.
Congrats to Josh Wenger, whose defensive pin against his a teammate won another title. Believe hes won it twice now, former CRP prep.
I like the NAIA. It lets the two best guys wrestle, even if they're from the same team. I also like that we have an alternative to the NCAA that supports women's wrestling. In the NAIA, they're obviously not doing it for the money.
My kid wrestles for a team that’s in the NAIA. I was surprised by the level of talent that is in that division. Not D1 for sure, but not a bunch of scrubs either. No easy matches, and if you want to wrestle in college they can give great scholarships and tend to put the emphasis on school more than living your life for a sport. Get a great degree, have a life, get to keep wrestling and have some help paying for school. It’s a great option.
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I think he means the NAIA is not in it for the money, as opposed to the NCAA.
Because the level is so far below Div. 1, most college wrestling careers won't happen for them. These guys may be getting scholarships, but they won't be wrestling in the Olympics. Maybe some will end up in MMA or coaching high school.
My son is a son sophomore in high school and we have been thinking about wrestling in college. He wants to get a degree in something like computer engineering or EE engineering. He also wants to wrestle in college. My wife and I have no idea what would be best for him. It seems like all the schools with good EE programs or Computer Engineering programs are big schools and we are not sure if he will be good enough to wrestle at the D1 major school level. If he is, then we are not sure he can get that type of degree and wrestle at that level. I like the option of an NAIA school for balance, but I am not sure any of them offer accredited programs in the areas he is interested. Does anyone have any insight to offer in these areas?
How many D3 schools offer accredited computer engineering degrees or Electrical engineering degrees? I know U of Illinois, ASU, Michigan, Lehigh, and Northwestern, offer those degrees, but I do not know of any D3 schools who offer them.
There is a realistic chance he can wrestle successfully at the D1 level. Fargo Cadet AA and 2A (middle size) state champ as a sophomore in Illinois. Not a world beater, but he will be recruited by some D1 schools, of that I am certain. Probably not the top tier ones though. D3 may be the answer.
Thanks for your feedback.
Check out the Ivy League. How good are his grades? How good are his wrestling credentials? The latter will tip the balance in terms of getting accepted.
I think Mankato State (D2) has a program.
Also look into JUCO. 2 years might be enough to get the wrestling fix out of the way and then can go to a bigger school with a top CE program.
Some of the D1 schools also have wrestling clubs. They can have a good level of wrestling, and if he is good enough, he may be able to transition to the D1 team. If you are not certain he is a D1 wrestler, then the education is clearly the more important aspect and should drive the decision. A friend of mine had a son who had the same decisions regarding ice hockey. He now is very happy with his education and club hockey. There are a good number of games and tournaments.
Here are Hansen’s stats wrestling against guys in recorded opens in WrestleStat. He split with Holloway back in 2016.
https://www.wrestlestat.com/wrestler/41089/hansen-evan/profile
I would cross-reference a list of Div 3 and NAIA schools against a list of schools with EE or Computer E schools. Here's some links to lists on the National Wrestling Coaches Association (NWCA) website:
http://www.nwcaonline.com/naia/naia-wrestling-teams/
http://www.nwcaonline.com/d3/d3-wrestling-teams/
They also have lists for Div 1 and 2.
As you know, D1, D2, and NAIA have wrestling scholarships. D3 does not.
Here is a free list for EE:
https://www.collegechoice.net/rankings/best-electrical-engineering-degrees/
US News and World Report has the big list, but I think you pay for the whole list:
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering-schools/electrical-engineering-rankings
Setting aside DI choices, and depending on your son's academic abilities, there's lots of options. Excellent students can go to places like Colorado School of Mines (DII) or Johns Hopkins (DIII). Both have wrestling teams and highly-rated EE programs.
Minnesota State Mankato (https://cset.mnsu.edu/ecet/aboutus/program.html)
There are probably more, but you get the idea. I hope your son finds a place that he'd like to go to college.
I got my Masters at Purdue (Iowa undergrad). Your son sounds like a perfect fit for the Boilermakers. Coach Ersland (another Iowa alum) has done great things with that wrestling program, the Engineering school is one of the finest in the world, and the career placement services for graduates is phenomenal (I was a huge beneficiary of it during he recession). I can also say, that as a former TA there, the athletic department takes academics extremely seriously. My office hours and exam prep sessions were full of committed, respectful, athletes. Based on what you have said, I think you should really give Purdue a look. Good luck to him in his wrestling and on his college decision, no matter where he ends up!
Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken is a near Ivy League level D3 school with a top engineering school that always has a classy wrestling program. If you look at the roster you’ll see it’s loaded with engineering students, who usually study together.
One of my friends kids ended up at Stevens, wrestled, and did engineering. Loved it. Another good suggestion.
What does he want to do with his degree? In some engineering fields, a BA is fine. In some, they don’t do much without a masters or PhD. If he knows he’s going straight into an advanced degree, his grad school is much more important than undergrad. Meaning, a more basic engineering or computer science degree at a good academic D3 school then a top specialized grad program is a great path.
Typically NAIA schools are not great academically. I’d imagine there are exceptions, but I couldn’t tell you.
What about San Francisco State University? Not a NAIA school but D2 and has Eletrical or Computer Engineering. It’s a slight step up but they have walkons. Great opportunity for Bay Area networking and Jason Welch is the HC there.
Thanks for all the great feedback guys. We will be thinking along these lines for the next couple years and hopefully some things will be clearer. For example, is he truly D1 material? Does he know which area he wants to concentrate on for academics? How big of a school does he want to go to? A lot to consider. I know choosing a college (Juco first then a 4 year school) were very tough decisions for me. I hope sees things clearer than I did.
Thanks again. You guys are the greatest.
Thanks again. You guys are the greatest.
I saw a ton of guys there who could wrestle at the D1 level if they were training for a D1 program... guys with high athletic seasons who would just need some D1 fine tuning in a D1 room with D1 practice partners...
A lot of guys choose to wrestle D1 because they either just want to say they wrestled D1 or because they don’t feel they would be given the respect they crave unless they wrestled at that level (which isn’t true...fans who know wrestling respect wrestlers at all levels)... make sure this isn’t the reason they choose against wrestling NAIA, D2, D3, Juco... Make sure the first priority is that they find the right fit in terms of their wrestling style, but most importantly that the school is a fit for their long-term career aspirations. You don’t have to be a D1 guy to attain a ton of respect at an elite level... look at Grant Henderson who graduated at Grand View last year... He wasn’t some can’t miss recruit coming out of HS (placed 3rd for Alburnett), but holy cow did he exceed expectations...he was a 3 time NAIA finalist, 2 time champ and Iowa thinks enough of the guy to where he was named a coach at the Eastern Iowa Wrestling Club...
Congrats to your bro on his first All-American finish and the first in school history at Graceland.
Thanks man! He’s actually the first since the reboot of the program... learned that from my great amigos at IAwrestle of all places when they posted the end of his placing match... I honestly had no idea that they had a program prior to a few years ago, but apparently they had some studs in the 60’s and 70’s...Paul Reedy’s Dad was one of them.
But yeah, was pretty proud of him... he’s always been so fun for us to watch in all sports because he’s so athletic... never focused on just wrestling until he quit football at Graceland halfway through the season this year because he started to miss being on the mat. It’s all wrestling from here on out and he’s just a true Freshman this year so if he redshirts, we have 4 more years left to watch him, which makes us all very happy.
His original thoughts on wrestling in college were that he wanted to go D1 or nothing for wrestling, but would play football at any level. He had one D1 program that really liked him at the Southern Plains tourney the Summer before his Sr. year. They quit talking to him after the infamous match he had with Brands was posted because they didn’t like what they saw from him at the end of the 2nd/beginning of the 3rd. Thought he broke, mentally...kinda did. And to this day, if you google his name (or Nelson’s), the first thing to come up is that match...his worst match he ever really had in HS. That’s the problem he ran into with another D1 program later on... one of his friends who went D1 gave his coach a tip on him and the guy googled him, saw the Brands match and didn’t feel he was worthy of giving a call back to. I think he applied almost everywhere... not a call back. I think he applied at Iowa 5 times...nothing. They may have liked him. Lot of athletic upside, and he was aware of his walk on status. So that whole thing was humiliating for him... you know and of course we read all the comments. We went from a high of him being named 1st team all state football that week to a low of him being dominated 1st tourney of the year, 16-9, and it was caught on video and since it was Brands, it essentially went viral right away because Brands has some celebrity power. I wish we would have had that one a couple weeks later... do I think he would have beaten Nelson? NOPE... that would be ignorant for me to say. But I think he would have given him a better match. We weren’t ready for Nelson at that time...not first week...he had just put the pads away. And he didn’t have a good game plan...you can’t go in and try to bull Brands...no one will beat Nelson at his own game, he’s the best at it... and my bro didn’t come to terms with the fact that he had to create distance, touch and go, be ready to counter first-then attack until the very end of that match when he scored that last takedown...he hates being on the defense and not being the over-zealously aggressive one, but with Nelson you have to make an exception...no one is going to beat him wrestling that way because he is the king of that particular dominion. No one will maul through Nelson, no one will bully him, no one will out-brawl him...you won’t get anywhere, physically, or mentally being overly physical with him...hell, the kid is fueled by physicality and being banged around a bit...you won’t intimidate or break him because the kid LITERALLY LIKES PAIN.....he is THE best at that game and my bro stubbornly wrestled that game with him and he got worked... bad.
Anyways, he ended up deciding to wrestle at Graceland and is finally having fun with it and is happy and we couldn’t be happier for him...and holy cow, Graceland had a TON of fans show up! It’s been a great experience so far! I can’t say enough nice things about Coach Zach Mullins and the job he is doing with those guys. Brennan is pretty serious with Maddie Mashek (Tom’s daughter, Dan’s granddaughter) and she is going there next year and he couldn’t be happier.
Hell, I can’t say enough nice things about Grand View...their wrestlers and staff... they are a straight-up hammer factory...
I could give you guys an in depth story on that Brands match we had from last year from our perspective (and I’d steer clear from the IAwrestle beef... they’ve been nice to a couple members of my family recently including Brennan and my daughter)... but I could write a story about the impact that match had on us, our experience leading to it, our approach to it, the build up before it (first time he was ever stared down), the history of those two (for example, my brother Justin coached at ICW for quite a while at the HS, JH and youth levels and was a full-fledged Nelson fanboy prior to) and it’d probably be an interesting read. One interesting thing is this... Nelson made his wrestling debut at the state level when he and Brennan were 6th graders.... I don’t know if he had ever really lost coming into that tourney, but he placed 5th, which means he lost twice. Both losses were to Brennan. The kid (Nelson) beat Sam Loyd first round and had Brennan 2nd round in which we were heavy favorites, for Brennan was a 4 time Grade School Champ, 1 time AAU champ, etc. Brennan slaughtered him the first match. 18-3. I think he got the tech at the beginning of the 3rd... and Nelson had like, a fan club there since he was Terry’s son...making his debut. I remember Brennan asking me after the first match “does everyone here hate me or something?” I had to explain to him about who is dad was. Anyways, it gets interesting in their 2nd meeting... in the console semis. Brennan got beat by a kid named Gable Sieperda in the semis in a close match and Nelson dominated his way through a bunch of returning place-winners on the backside to the top 6. This match was different... to this day, I can’t get over how quick of a learner Nelson must have been from a young age... we went from teching him in about 2 minutes to pinning him in OT the next day... and we were lucky to get to OT... had a last second TD in regulation. So in OT, Brennan took him down to his back with a carry and Nelson quit and while down he screamed...and it wasn’t like a wimpy little kid scream, it was a hoarse, “I am frustrated out of my mind and pissed off as hell right now and want to destroy something” scream... and when the ref slapped the mat, I remember his mom yelling, “NELSON! DONT YOU DARE QUIT!!!” And I doubt he ever did again. But what was crazy is that when we teched him, we used a variety of different moves from our feet, top, etc. and the next day he took EVERYTHING away from him like an experienced, polished wrestler would...and remember, this was when he first started wrestling competitively against these kids who had been doing it for 6 years already. To this day, if you’d ask me which guys I have ever witnessed who picked up on the sport the quickest, I’d give you two answers...Drew Foster and Nelson Brands. The subtle, intrinsic technical adjustments that kid learned and implemented in a matter of a day was unbelievable. For real. But yeah, we never met up with him again until last year and that was that.
Here is a pic of the placers in that one: 1st- Sieperda, 2nd-Zane Mulder, 3rd-Brennan, 4th-Jackson Feldman, 5th- Nelson, 6th- Ryan Steffen, 7th- Skylar Noftsger, 8th- Aden Reeves... that’s 4 future champs (Steffen, Nelson, Noftsger, Aden), 5 future finalists with Brennan and all of them, except Feldman placed. The more interesting thing is the shirts... Aden has what Sam Loyd swears is a New London shirt. Brennan borrowed one of my old Sublime “40 Oz. to Freedom” t-shirts not knowing what the hell that meant! But look at Nelson... that is an OLD SCHOOL Hawkeye wrestling hoodie and if memory serves me correctly, it read “Brands” on the back...so I’m guessing a vintage Terry hoodie... pretty cool!!!
Lol, a simple, “thank you” probably would have been an appropriate response, but I rambled.
Would you think it would be cool to see how Grand View would perform in a Major D1 tourney? Just to see what happens?
Do you think some of these guys would be even better in a D1 setting? Since someone above wrote (or maybe I read this somewhere else) that one of the main differences between D1 and NAIA/D2/etc. with an exception of the obvious talent level being better in D1 since “blue chips” are recruited to wrestle there, but the lifestyles generally imposed at those levels differ a bit, for in D1...you don’t get much of a break, but in the other classifications it’s more seasonal?
I watched guys like Hansen, Bartel, Early, Lovvorn (who had a stint in D1 and did ok), Pozo, etc. and thought, “man...they sure pass the eye test as being people who are capable of succeeding at that level...”
Grand View in a D1 tourney you ask?
Reno this year (FloArena, you'll need to navigate to college dropdown)
http://arena.flowrestling.org/event/63e64e1e-6ae8-4838-be32-7666542c9778
and from the Graceland reference, it was the school's first AA since reinstating the program in 2013. The last AA was back in 1978. The program was dropped in 1982, when its most famous alum was still a decathlete.
Reno this year (FloArena, you'll need to navigate to college dropdown)
http://arena.flowrestling.org/event/63e64e1e-6ae8-4838-be32-7666542c9778
and from the Graceland reference, it was the school's first AA since reinstating the program in 2013. The last AA was back in 1978. The program was dropped in 1982, when its most famous alum was still a decathlete.
Thanks for the info! And ah yes, famous decathlete, Bruce Springsteen, errr, I mean Jenner takes a lot of Graceland light these days!!! Very tough, masculine feats what that Bruce Jenner accomplished!!!
I had been reporting that incorrectly for TP all weekend when Beeson and Brennan became AA’s. Was all, “first AA’s for Graceland Wrestling EVAR!!!” I’m glad it was my bestest good buddies, my buddies at IAwrassle that set me straight on the history of the school that my brothers wrestle for!!!
They didn’t do too bad at all.. especially without Hansen.
Ryan Niven (165) got 2nd.... ?! And he beat that Griffith kid from Stanford who went like 7-6 with Vincenzo Joseph the next week?!
Aight... Bren’s best two wins during the season this year were probably against Andrew Bartel and vs. Niven in the HOC finals...Both placed ahead of him this weekend...Bartel 3rd, Niven 2nd. I knew Niven was good...knew that he had won a couple state championships in MA and was 4-2 at Super 32 wayyy back in the day... but I didn’t know this about Reno. And I’m glad I didn’t, for I filmed that match for TP’s YouTube channel and blatantly couldn’t control my bias/excitement during the match for my bro. I mean... I just can’t do it. I’ve never been able to. And because of that match, I refuse to film any of my bro’s matches for TP because to anyone who wasn’t on the Brennanwagon in that match (which may have been limited to just GV guys because they have a lot of haters... just because they win), I sounded like an obnoxious buffoon and would have been an even shakier, more obnoxious buffoon if I had seen those Reno results before now.
I am seriously making a highlight vid of Niven’s badass moments at NAIA Nats, for that reason... because I didn’t feel like it was fair to him that in his HOC finals, he had his opponent’s bro filming and not being able to control his adrenaline. When the adrenaline wore off, I legit began feeling like a tool about that. The guy seems to be a leader, he’s good, he’s a veteran, he had great sportsmanship...he didn’t deserve that and I owe the dude a respectful gesture of some sort. Haha, making a highlight vid to a Dropkick Murphy’s song since hey are a Massachusetts band.
Shiaquan Hall, Lawton Benna, Rodriguez-Spencer, Devin Reynolds, etc... looks like they all had some solid wins over D1 guys.Hall beat Terao.... Terao has been a sneaky Fantasy Wrestling FLEX start for me a time or two.
