Fargo Blog: For Fargo first timers, this is an amazing experience

Thursday, July 20 – For Fargo first timers, this is an amazing experience
By Gary Abbott

Photo of Melinda Watkins, wrestling parent and pairing official from Pennsylvania, with her son Austin Watkins, of Team Pennsylvania, at the USMC Junior Nationals today.

Last night, I had a chance to have a meal with some friends, Ed and Marcia Gould of New York, who are part of the team of volunteers who make the combined USMC Junior and Cadet Nationals happen. Ed and Marcia are pairing officials, and Ed is a past state chairperson for New York USA Wrestling. They have invested decades of time and passion in providing wrestling opportunities to young men and women from their state and around the country. They are dear friends of mine and my wife Patricia, and we visit often when we go back to New York or New Jersey.

The Goulds brought a friend with them to dinner, Melinda Watkins, who is a wrestling mom and pairing official from Pennsylvania. They got to know Melinda at wrestling events on the East Coast. The Goulds really enjoy her company, and for me, it is always nice to meet new people from the wrestling family. We had a nice meal together, a chance to get out of the Dome and relax a bit.

When we got talking about Fargo this year, it quickly became apparent that this was Melinda’s first time in Fargo for the Junior and Cadet Nationals. Her son Austin Watkins is competing here for Team Pennsylvania in the Junior 160 pound division and Melinda came to support Austin. This is Austin’s second trip to Fargo to compete, but Melinda was not able to make it the last time in person.

Melinda was having a great time, and experiencing many of the special things about Fargo for the first time. She had an energy and enthusiasm about all of it. It was refreshing to hear her perspective about all kinds of things Fargo related. Olympic champion Rulon Gardner was also in the restaurant with Team Wyoming, and Melinda and Marcia went over to speak with him and both came back with selfie photos with Ru.

For me, I was trying to figure out how many Junior Nationals I have attended. It is something around 30, either as an athlete, coach or USA Wrestling employee. I am a Junior Nationals veteran for sure, although there are people with even more service to this event. It is year 47 for the Juniors, going all the way back to Iowa City in 1971.

It made me think of my first Junior Nationals. I tried out for Team New York for three years in the state championships held up in Johnson City (near Binghamton). I did not make the team until my senior year when I won the Greco-Roman Junior States. As part of the New York Team competing in the Junior Nationals in Iowa City, I trained for a few weeks then drove across the country in a bus. We had dual meets in Illinois and Wisconsin along the way before getting to Iowa City.

The Junior Nationals was a big deal for me. I was put into the freestyle lineup in addition to Greco-Roman, and fell just short of the medal rounds in both styles. My teammate in my weight class, Bob Bury, won the freestyle title. (I had a history of wrestling him around the state and regional freestyle circuit). Marcia Gould had a picture of Bob Bury on her cell phone last night. He wrestled at Penn State and is a dentist near York, Pa. Marcia visited with him during the Cadet National Duals in York. It was good to see an image of Bob again, and it brought back thoughts of that first Junior Nationals for me. I also remembered how important that Junior Nationals experience was for my wrestling career. The next year, as a freshman walk-on at Boston University, I made the starting lineup, and credit that summer of Junior Nationals training and competition for giving me confidence and better technique.

After dinner, we drove Melinda back to her hotel, and she saw her son Austin walking on the street near the hotel. Austin was with some teammates, including Edmond Ruth (the brother of World Team member and three-time NCAA champion Ed Ruth). They were going to the corner store for some food or drink, and it looked like they were having a good time together.

Spending time with Melinda and hearing about Austin’s wrestling career and experiences was a good thing for me. When I saw Melinda in the Fargodome today, I asked her if I could take a photo of her and Austin together. Austin agreed to it, and I have a nice graphic of Mom and Son to go with this blog.

It is easy to get caught up in all of the hard work and challenges at the Junior/Cadet Nationals, which often leads to some serious fatigue. We spend 10 days inside of a football stadium, with thousands of athletes and tens of thousands of matches going on. It is fair to call it a grind at times.

But it is good to remember that for many people here in Fargo, this is their first experience at the event and this is very special for them. It helps drive me, along with my fellow staff members and volunteer leaders, to work hard to make sure this is the best competition it can be. We have to strive to make sure the first-timers have such a great experience that they will come back again. And for some of them who get hooked, to come back here again and again and again.

Wednesday, July 19 – Junior Women’s Nationals growing, one team at a time

Photo of Team Nevada at USMC Junior Nationals by Jim Thrall.

There has been one constant within USA Wrestling the last few years. Women’s wrestling is continuing to grow, especially at the youth and age-group levels. We are seeing record numbers of entries in all of USA Wrestling’s major age-group events, not just the Junior and Cadet Nationals in Fargo, but also the Folkstyle Nationals in Oklahoma City, and the Women’s Age-Group Nationals in Irving, Texas.

Today was the start of the Junior Women’s Nationals, and once again, the entry numbers are up, just like they were in the Cadet division a few days ago.

There have been a number of states which have been able to bring big teams and help fuel the growth, with California, Texas, Washington and New York bringing healthy delegations to Fargo each year. Of these states, only New York does not have an official state high school tournament for girls, but it is an official sport in New York City public schools. These are the trendsetters for sure.

Looking at the entry numbers this year, kudos need to go to states including Illinois, Wisconsin and Oregon, which have been able to get more girls to come to Fargo, but also help those girls have improved performances.

There were 39 states with Junior women’s girls teams this year, and the growth is coming from all of them, not just the states with well developed girls programs. We are seeing more teams, and we are seeing larger teams. And when you add it all up, the USMC Junior/Cadet Nationals continues to grow.

At the same time of the growth, there has also been an improvement in the quality of the competition, with more athletes who have experience, with access to good coaching and a supportive environment in which to flourish. I did an event preview of the Women’s Junior tournament prior this morning, and the number of strong competitors in each weight class was impressive. Winning a Junior Nationals title or achieving All-American status in Fargo is getting harder and harder.

The tournament was about to start this afternoon, and I noticed that the Junior Women’s Team from Nevada went up to take pictures on the raised mat. Decked out in their singlets, the young women lined up for a variety of poses. Not only did it catch my eye, but I went over there to snap some pictures. Luckily, one of our top-notch wrestling photographers was there with the team, Jim Thrall, who gave me the nice photo of Team Nevada which I used for this story.

Nevada had eight women in the team shot, along with two of their coaches. It was a classic picture, the kind you would see for years for boys and men, from youth to high school to college. Women’s wrestling is starting to grow in a new way. It is no longer just one athlete at a time. Now it is growing one team at a time. We need to give credit to the coaches, parents and state leaders who are working hard to encourage more girls to wrestle and more to attend USA Wrestling.

This is not just growth at the state association level within USA Wrestling. We are seeing more girls on high school teams and in youth clubs all across the nation.

There is a specific project going on right now, where the wrestling community is seeking to get official status for girls wrestling in every high school state association across the nation. The states that have official state tournaments have shown the way. We are seeing growth in California, Texas, Hawaii, Washington, Tennessee and Alaska, which have sanctioned girls wrestling in their high schools. The idea is to get every state to sign on for this, which would provide explosive growth everywhere.

USA Wrestling has had a subcommittee working on this project, led by Joan Fulp of California and Andrea Yamamoto of Washington, along with an army of people in different states. Wrestle Like A Girl, the amazing non-profit founded by World medalist Sally Roberts, is also working on this issue through its #Campaign44, which is aiming to get state recognition in those 44 states that have not yet provided a state meet for their girl wrestlers. As our sport gets more states on board, more high schools across the nation will start all-girls wrestling teams, and our sport will expand even faster.

Just take a look out on the Fargodome floor today and see all of those girls wrestling. It is a beautiful sight for sure. Imagine what it will be like when every state gets on board with girls high school wrestling!!!

Tuesday, July 18 – Veterans wrestlers making an impact in Fargo
by Gary Abbott

Anybody who knows anything about Veterans wrestling knows Chris Brown. He is one of the guys over 35 years old who still lace up the Nike wrestling shoes and compete in wrestling. Chris has won two Veterans World Greco-Roman titles for Team USA. He has been the Team Captain for the U.S. Veterans World Team, helping with the organization and promotion of Veterans wrestling (also known as Masters).

Chris is a member of USA Wrestling’s Ad-Hoc Associated Styles Committee, which oversees not only the Veterans but also Grappling, Beach Wrestling, Belt Wrestling, Pahlavani Koshti and Pankration. Chris is as enthusiastic about all of those wrestling opportunities as he is for those in the Veterans division.

I knew Chris would be here coaching, working with the men and women with Team Maryland. This is something that Chris has done for a number of years, volunteering his time to coach young people.

As I was looking around for Chris, I noticed a number of others from the Veterans ranks. Like Chris, many of his peers were here to help with state association teams, while a few others were here to support USA Wrestling and the tournament. I was thinking about including this in my blog, when Chris came up to me and suggested USA Wrestling should publicize the fact that Veterans wrestlers are here in big numbers and making a difference in Fargo. We were thinking the same exact thing.

Of course, no good story can be published without a great graphic, so Chris agreed to get the Veterans in the Fargodome together for a photo. We met before the start of one of the competition sessions at the head table. There were enough guys who showed up that we moved the picture into the mixed zone where we could have the USA Wrestling backdrop behind the group. Right when we finished the shot, another Veteran wrestler came running up, and we had to take the photo again to include him.

Why would adults, those who are in middle age or above, want to train hard to compete in a demanding physical sport like wrestling? I wouldn’t know, because I hung up the shoes in my mid 20’s, and they have never come out of the storage room. Ask a Veterans wrestler, and he or she will tell you that as a group, they truly enjoy the competition aspect of wrestling. It gives them the motivation to work out and keep healthy. But they will also tell you about the spirit of friendship that comes when they get together with other Veterans wrestlers from around the world.

Based upon what these Veterans were doing in Fargo, you would have to add service to wrestling to that list of reasons to be involved. They were working the corners as coaches and helping different state teams in a variety of ways. While these men and women often work out with younger people to help themselves prepare, they are also passing on their knowledge and passion for wrestling to a new generation. Even if you would never consider competing in wrestling in your 40’s or 50’s, you have to understand that his is a group of people who love wrestling. That dedication to the sport can be seen in the growth and success of the boys and girls they are helping mentor. These people are giving back to wrestling, and we should thank them when we get a chance.

Monday, July 17 – Communications coordinator Taylor Miller reflects on her first year at USA Wrestling.

By Taylor Miller

Photo: USA Wrestling communications staff (left to right): Gary Abbott, Taylor Miller and Richard Immel. 

A year ago, I started my first day at USA Wrestling, and it was unlike most first days that people experience.

Mine happened at USMC Cadet and Junior Nationals. I walked into the Fargodome and saw more than 20 mats laid down, and I thought, ‘what did I get myself into?’

Truthfully, it was one of the hardest weeks I had experienced. Everything was so new to me. I was no longer covering the same 10-20 guys I had been writing about during my time as sports information director at Oklahoma State. I was now keeping an eye on more than 4,000 wrestlers over the course of a week. But by the end of it all, I realized how much fun I had and felt so reassured in my decision to work for USA Wrestling.

Well, I just celebrated my one year anniversary at USAW on Saturday, and I’m back where it all started—in Fargo, N.D.

The past year has been full of learning experiences, most good but some were tough. This job is constantly challenging me to learn more, do more and grow as a communications professional.

I’m lucky to be a part of this staff. My communications teammates Gary Abbott and Richard Immel work incredibly hard and have pushed me more in the last 12 months than anyone I have ever worked with. Their dedication is unmatched.  They serve as great examples to live up to.

The work is never-ending. There aren’t many weekends that we get to ourselves. The travel is exhausting at times, but holy cow, it is all so fulfilling.

To give you an idea, we’re at Fargo, one of the biggest wrestling tournaments in the world, and we’re working on so much more than that. Richard and I each pulled all-nighters this weekend covering the Grand Prix of Spain and still had Fargo duties to take care of the next day, along with preparing previews for the World Championships. That’s the job. But what a cool job!

As I reflect on the last 12 months, I’m reminded of how lucky I am to do something I love every day. Sure, it sounds like a cliché, but it’s true. Celebrating every year completed at USA Wrestling by working Fargo doesn’t seem so bad. It’s a good measuring stick to see how far I’m come from the year before, and with this staff, I know I’ll see major improvements with every revolution around the sun.

So happy one-year anniversary to me. I look forward to many more years with this company and in this crazy world of wrestling. 

Sunday, July 16 – College coaches flock to FargoDome for prime-time recruiting

Photo of Iowa State assistant coach Brent Metcalf, getting ready to coach his next match for Team Iowa.

If you throw a rock at the USMC Junior and Cadet Nationals in any direction, you hit a college coach. It’s true. I tested it out today.

I didn’t really use a rock. I crumpled up a piece of paper, gave it a launch and it worked.

There is a reason there are so many college coaches in the building. They are looking for athletes to compete at their university, and the athletes serious about being wrestlers are here in abundance.

Just ask them. They will tell you. Anybody crazy about wrestling enough to train all summer when school is out, travel to Fargo, N.D. and challenge themselves against other like-minded people with extreme talent has what it takes to compete in college while handling the academic and social challenges of a student-athlete.

We are publishing a daily list of wrestling “celebrities” who have been spotted in Fargo, and the college coaches will be included in that story.

One of the great things is that many of these coaches aren’t just watching. They have joined in as coaches with state association teams, actually helping coach the next generation of college wrestlers and Olympic-level stars.

It is kind of neat to see Andrew Howe, a Northwestern assistant, coaching an Illinois kid, while over on another mat, Cornell assistant coach Mike Gray is working with a New Jersey athlete. You could have also seen Iowa State assistant coach Brent Metcalf tutoring an Iowa kid. Tom Erikson, head coach at Lyon University, is helping all of the Arkansas wrestlers.

A guy like Metcalf knows a little bit about Fargo. He won a record six Fargo Junior titles coming out of Davison, Mich., three each in freestyle and Greco-Roman. That’s the kind of guy you want in your corner in a close match. Add in two NCAA titles and numerous Senior World Teams and you get some great mentorship.

Besides watching matches or coaching kids, these college coaches are grabbing all of the media guides made by the different state associations bragging on their team members. If you on the mat in Fargo, you are a potential recruit. It is not just Div. I coaches here, but also Div. II, Div. III, NAIA and Junior College coaches. Wrestling teams need talent, and that is what it takes to make it to Fargo.

People sometimes note that not all of the highly ranked high schoolers are in Fargo each year. That is true, but not if you expand to them competing here at least one or two times in their careers. Flowrestling, which promoted some of the former Fargo wrestlers who are now Senior-level stars, would not be able to fit them all if they showed all of the great college wrestlers who have been on the floor at the Junior or Cadet Nationals.

It is fun to go through the video online and search for college wrestlers for their matches in Fargo. A lot of those matchups in the Junior or Cadet Nationals are replicated later on a college wrestling mat or on an Olympic or World Team Trials mats. And that is why you see so many college coaches here.

Saturday, July 15 – Everything is new this year, at least to this old dog

Talk to anybody who has been to the USMC Junior/Cadet Nationals many times, and you usually hear somebody bring up the movie Groundhog Day. Once you get into that FargoDome, everything seems the same, day after day, year after year. The wrestling is different, but the experience feels like a carbon-copy of other days. It is kind of like the Olympics. Every day you have to remind yourself what day of the week it is, and what the actual date is, and what is on the schedule that day.

But not in 2017. For a Fargo veteran like me, things are not the same. When I wake up and get going, I have to figure out what to do. Really strange.

Consider this. The schedule is exactly backwards. We are starting with freestyle, not Greco or women. The college coaches are all over the place today, where in other years, they sometimes showed up later in the week. The first Saturday has usually been for Cadet women and started in the afternoon. Today, we are watching Cadet men first and we had a 9:00 a.m. start.

The sponsors are new, with the U.S. Marine Corps in its first year supporting the world’s largest tournament. This morning, during the initial national anthem, I looked up at the U.S. flag and saw three big U.S. Marine Corps banners, with the words Honor, Courage, Commitment on them, and photos of our men and women service members. It was very new, and very appropriate.

We have APS, our new Merchandiser, selling some neat new products, much with the Nike brand. That is new for Fargo. My Communications team flew into a new airport, Jamestown, N.D., which was a first for us. We have a bunch of new USA Wrestling employees, some who are in their first Fargo. Some of our staff, like long-time Events guy Ryan Johnson, have changed job responsibilities, as he is now managing our Sponsor programs. All different. The referees have a different room where they get hospitality, so when I went looking for somebody, I had to go somewhere else.

They had a Cadet weighin last night, which has not been the tradition here since they changed some of the scheduling a number of years ago. I was able to see the entries and brackets the night before, which allowed me time to write a Cadet freestyle preview, something not available in the old schedule.

I have to remind myself that things are new, and I should be doing new things because of it. It is no longer Groundhog Day.

We started posting team rosters for the first time this year, which worked out very well. We are working to get bios in advance from the states, and we will handle that task differently than other times. Our Communications team is doing some different social media things than we have done other years.

The tournament is being bracketed by Flowrestling, so I am learning how to take advantage of that system to help me cover the event better. The display boards are done in a different way in a different color than previous years. The North Dakota State staff even moved the computer and printer to a different location on press row, so I am looking towards the end zone, not out onto the raised mat.

They say you can’t teach an old dog some new tricks, but that really isn’t true. As one of the old dogs within USA Wrestling, I can report that we are trying a few new tricks. Why not? Everything else has changed this year in Fargo. Time to get with the new program.

Thursday, July 13 – Arrival in Fargo and getting settled in
by Gary Abbott

Today, USA Wrestling’s Communications staff were among the thousands of wrestling people who are converging in Fargo, N.D. for the annual Junior and Cadet Nationals, the world’s largest wrestling tournament and the most prestigious high school competition hosted in our nation. Over 4,000 high school-age boys and girls will compete inside the FargoDome over eight days, seeking national titles, All-American honors, and a chance to test themselves against the nation’s best. There are seven different tournaments over the eight days, with mats laid down from end-zone to end-zone in an indoor football stadium.

There is a lot different about Fargo this year. The schedule has been reversed, with freestyle going early in the week and concluding with Greco-Roman for the boys. The girls competition will start a little later, and run through the end of the week with the Women’s Duals on the final Saturday. The event also has a brand new sponsor, the U.S. Marine Corps.

But there is a lot that remains the same, the kind things that make “Fargo” something special within our sport. If you have ever been to Fargo for this event, or like me have been here multiple times, you know what I am talking about.

This year, our Communications team of Richard Immel, Taylor Miller and I flew into a different airport for the competition. In previous years, we have flown into either Fargo directly or into Minneapolis and driven the almost four hours to get there. One year, my wife Pat and I drove up to Fargo from Colorado, something I will probably not do again (but we did get a chance to see Mount Rushmore on the way back).

This time around, the combination of price and timing made Jamestown, N.D. our best option. We arrived in a small airport, surrounded by farm land, rented a car and drove east for 95 miles on I-94 to get to Fargo. Joining us was another USA Wrestling who is going to the combined Junior/Cadet Nationals for the first time, Patrick Bennett.

It was actually a bit chilly today in Fargo, much cooler than the over 90-degree weather we have had recently in Colorado. We had lunch when we arrived in Fargo, then went to the Fargodome, got our credentials, checked into our dorm and unpacked, made a run to Walmart for some supplies and have gotten settled in. I snapped a photo of the raised mat in the center of the football stadium which was still getting set up, which will be the center of attention for many days to come.

People these days talk about Fargo, but for me and others who have done this over many decades, we probably still call it Junior Nationals. We are the ones who have been at Junior Nationals when it spent its early years in Iowa City, then moved to Cedar Falls, then had a short stretch in Warrensburg and St. Paul before finding its current home in Fargo. It would be fun to get together everybody who will be in the FargoDome this week who have been to Junior Nationals in all five of those cities. It might be a bigger group than you realize.

I can’t tell you how many times I have been to Junior Nationals. I remember my first, when I competed for Team New York in 1978 at the Junior Nationals in Iowa City after my senior year in high school. I wrestled both freestyle and Greco-Roman, won a bunch of matches but did not achieve All-American status in either style. It was a great experience and helped me improve as I moved on to college.

The big name from my Junior Nationals was an athlete named Andre Metzger of Michigan (who was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame this year). I remember an exciting middleweight named Darryl Burley of New Jersey, a kid that went on to excel at Lehigh. And there was a big, strong guy who people did not know much about who won the freestyle heavyweight title named Bruce Baumgartner (you might have heard about his career at the Olympic level). Two New York guys won titles, the stud in my weight class Bob Bury, who was freestyle champion, and a kid who was just learning Greco-Roman named Phil Lanzatella. Bury wrestled for Penn State, and Lanzatella competed in four Greco-Roman Trials after wrestling at St. Lawrence.

I missed a bunch of Junior Nationals when I was in college. However, I got to return in the mid 1980’s as a Greco-Roman coach for Team Massachusetts, when the event was held in Cedar Falls, Iowa in the UNIDome at the Univ. of Northern Iowa. When USA Wrestling hired me in 1988, the event was still in Cedar Falls, but shortly after, it was moved. We did a year in Warrensburg, Mo. (which was the site of the Cadet Nationals for a few years) then a year in St. Paul, before the Fargo community took over the Junior Nationals. The first few years, it was just the Junior Nationals by itself in Fargo. In 1996, USA Wrestling combined the Junior and Cadet Nationals for a year, so our people to could attend the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Ga., and it has remained combined ever since.

Since I have been at USA Wrestling, I have missed Fargo a few times in order to attend other wrestling competitions. Now with the organization 29 years, I probably have been here 25 times as a staff member. The event has changed and evolved over the years, but one thing remains constant. The quality of the wrestling is fantastic, and the importance of “Fargo” within American wrestling remains very strong. There is a reason so many tough wrestlers come here to compete, a reason why the college coaches show up to recruit, a reason why so many volunteers give up their time to make the event a success. It really is a big deal.

This year, our entire Communications staff is here, so we are looking to do a bang-up job covering all aspects of the Fargo experience. We have tried some new things already this year, publishing the team rosters in advance so fans can see who will be coming from each of the state associations. We will do a Fargo blog again this year, and may have a few people make contributions to give it a unique viewpoint. We hope you enjoy some different perspectives this blog may provide. We will do our best to make it interesting.

Welcome back to Fargo. Whether you are here in person, watching the live broadcast on Flowrestling, or following the stories on TheMat.com and other wrestling media, we are glad you are with us again this year. We don’t know what is going to happen when things kick off on Saturday, but you can be sure it will be interesting and exciting.