Casey Cunningham 4th, Tony Gansen 7th at trials
Greg Burghardt
Two CMU wrestling coaches recently competed in the U.S. World Team Trials for the chance to represent their country.
Assistant Coach Casey Cunningham finished fourth place at 74 kg at the trials June 20 through 22 at the Convention Center in Indianapolis.
Volunteer Coach Tony Gansen took seventh place at 84 kg.
Cunningham began the tournament by facing off against a familiar face — Clint Musser — who he defeated to win the NCAA championship in 1999.
“It was weird that we had to wrestle in the first match. I hadn’t wrestled him since college, so it was pretty fun,” Cunningham said.
Just like old times, Cunningham scored a technical fall to beat Musser 10-0 — putting him in the semifinals, where he lost 4-0 in overtime to Kirk White.
Cunningham then came back with a 14-4 win over Matt Lackey and went on to beat two-time National Champion Don Pritzlaff 3-2 — finishing third in the challenge tournament.
Because the champion of the U.S. Open receives a buy into the top spot of the trials, a third place win in the tournament put Gansen in fourth place.
He was not given a chance to wrestle for true third and make the national team.
“To me, third or fourth doesn’t matter. I wanted to win was all,” he said. “My goal is to win and that did happen, so that’s definitely what I’m training for — to be a No. 1 guy.”
Cunningham said competition levels were high.
“Most of the guys are national champs, so there’s really no matches that are easy,” he said. “You can’t go in and make a lot of mistakes and expect to win. You have to be ready to wrestle every match.”
Cunningham was competing in the trials for his third time. He took second place last year and did not place when he competed in 2000.
Gansen competed in the trials for his first time this year, advancing to the semifinals after hitting a three-point move with three seconds left to beat Aaron Simpson 4-3.
“That was great to win that match, because he was the last guy to beat me at the U.S. Open. It was a pretty tight match between us,” he said.
Gansen fell out of the winners bracket when he lost to eventual champion Lee Fullhart 10-0. He then lost his next two matches to finish sixth in the challenge tournament and seventh overall in the trials.
Gansen said other than the first match, he didn’t compete well at all.
“Things didn’t go my way. I need to get a good year of training in and I need to grow into the weight class; then maybe I can compete a little better,” he said.
“It’s without a doubt the toughest wrestling event that you can find in the United States, as far as domestically,” he said.
Gansen said his skill level is up to par but some of the competition was too physical for him.
“I just haven’t had a very good year of training behind me,” he said.
Cunningham said he didn’t perform at the level he wanted to either, and made some mistakes that cost him.
“I didn’t have a real good tournament, and I sat back and waited for them to attack me and it cost me,” he said. “It was pretty disappointing, but I believe everything happens for a reason and it’ll all work itself out eventually.”
Gansen and Cunningham said they’re taking the summer off to train and also run wrestling camps for high school students before wrestling again in the fall.
