2008 Woodie Awards
UTTER DOMINATION
Wrestling stays focused on MAC
By: Aaron Vigneault
Issue date: 2/6/08 Section: Sports
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Being the favorite isn't always the easiest position to be in, as nearly 98 million people found out during Sunday's Super Bowl.
The Chippewas have managed to avoid an upset and keep an eye on the NCAA Championships in late March.
Tom Borrelli occasionally is disappointed about the effort his team gives during MAC duals, but has found ways to motivate his team.
"Against Eastern, some of the younger guys didn't show up ready to wrestle," Borrelli said. "We thought that because we had CMU on our chest, they would just roll over and let us pin them."
Despite the lack of intensity, CMU won 22-12.
Borrelli finds it helpful to remind his team that even though they have dominated the MAC, including nine consecutive regular season championships, other teams possess talent as well.
"You have to explain to these guys that it's Division I athletics," he said. "Regardless of where you're ranked or who you've competed against, it's still Division I athletics. There's not a ton of Division I schools that sponsor the sport compared to basketball, where there's two hundred and some teams, so the talent pool is bottlenecked into a third of the teams that a lot of the other sports have.
"Whenever you are competing against a Division I team, you're competing against a good wrestler," Borrelli said. "The challenge is getting the guys to understand that."
Borrelli said he has had the most trouble getting the message to his younger wrestlers, which will occasionally result in an upset. The seniors have taken his message to heart and look at every match as an opportunity to improve.
"We get up for these matches by looking at it as a way to get in shape and a way to get better," said senior 197-pounder Wynn Michalak. "We can't look at it as a match against a down team, we have to look at it as an opportunity."
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