Wrestling head coach faces son’s team in dual meet
Wrestling head coach Tom Borrelli and his son, Jason, who helms No. 23 Stanford, will meet at McGuirk Arena tonight.
The two schools compete in a dual meet at 7:30 p.m.
"I know that he has a good team this year, so it'll be a competitive dual meet," Tom said. "I don't necessarily like that. You don't want to be that competitive against your relatives or your friends, but I'm pretty competitive and he is, too."
Jason is a CMU alum and wore the singlet for the Chippewas as a four-year starter and Mid-American Conference champion.
After graduating in 2005, he served as an assistant coach under his father and helped Central Michigan to its ninth consecutive MAC championship.
After the 2006-07 season, Jason joined Stanford and worked as an assistant for a year before the head coach took a job at Maryland, allowing Jason to inherit the position. At the time of his hire, Jason was the youngest NCAA Division I coach.
This season will mark his fifth as Stanford's head coach, coming off of a strong 2012-13 season. In his time at Stanford, Jason has guided five individual wrestlers to qualify for the NCAA championships a total of 12 times.
"Wrestling is something he has always loved to be around," Tom said. "It's pretty rewarding for him to have him be able to work at something that he really enjoys and to do it on the level that he likes to compete on."
Despite the sentiment, Jason will receive no sympathy from his father when their teams are pitted against each other.
Tom has the upper hand in their series thus far, handily defeating his son's team two of the three times they have faced off.
This time might be different. Stanford is returning four NCAA qualifiers, including 157-pound Pac-12 champion Bret Baumbach and Evan Silver, 125-pound Pac-12 runner-up.
Tom said it would be a competitive dual meet and his team would have to step up to beat some highly ranked Stanford wrestlers in order to come out on top. Stanford has three ranked wrestlers, including No. 3 ranked Ryan Mango at the 133 weight class.
The Borrellis have been in contact over the last week but have stayed off the topic of competition. At least, it will be an interesting Thanksgiving dinner once the dust has cleared.
"The one who's probably stirred up the most friction is (Jason's) wife; she wants to see them win pretty badly, and even my wife is in his corner," Tom said. "I feel like I'm on an island."
Jason was not be made available for comment by Stanford athletics.
