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By Bruce Closson EWL/Wrestling Report
01/09/2001
The EWL "WRESTLER OF THE WEEK" for the week ended January 6, 2001 is Brian Floyd of West Virginia University We have great rivalries and fierce competition right within our own Eastern Wrestling League. Beating a brother EWL member or winning an EWL crown is a high honor in itself. There are weeks, however, where we thoroughly enjoy looking beyond our own EWL family brawls and rejoicing in our EWL team victories over non-EWL opponents. EWL fans, this is one of those weeks! The biggest EWL team win of this past week? Our choice among many is West Virginia's 22-10 victory over the Big Ten's Penn State, that dual meet having been held early Saturday evening January 6 at Morgantown. That WVU win was only the sixth time (out of 27) that the Mountaineers have beaten the Nittany Lions in a dual meet. In view of the WVU win, we have selected the spark-plug of that team effort, as our EWL Wrestler of the Week for the week ended January 7, 2001. The wrestler is BRIAN FLOYD, who posted a scrappy 4-3 upset win over PSU's former national prep school champion Maret Tomaev. Brian Floyd is one of those tough, hard-nosed kids, who does not necessarily have all the vast physical skills of a blue-chip recruit, but keeps plugging away under a good EWL wrestling program, until he becomes a Division I winner. Brian is a West Virginia native, who did not win States in high school, and was not recruited by Division I wrestling schools. He entered WVU last year as a walk-on, and spent the season working hard, improving on technique, and waiting for his chance to wrestle varsity. Head coach Craig Turnbull notes that Brian Floyd is, "a great kid and very dedicated to wrestling." Coach Turnbull also told us that this was the season that WVU planned to wrestle super redshirt frosh Zach Allen at 133 pounds, but that the Kansas native had gotten hurt wrestling freestyle and is out for the year. The Allen injury offered Brian Floyd the opportunity to start for the Mountaineers that he had been waiting for, and he is making the most of that opportunity this wrestling season! Congratulations to Brian Floyd, our EWL wrestler of the week. We also give a tip of the headgear in recognition, besides the West Virginia win, of five other of our Eastern Wrestling League wrestling squads who had big wins over solid non-EWL teams this past week. The five are the University of Pittsburgh, Clarion University, Lock Haven University, Cleveland State and Edinboro University.
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