Wrestling, gymnastics share McGuirk Arena for dual event
The CMU wrestling team took the mat yesterday in a different atmosphere than ever before.
The Chippewas dual meet against Old Dominion wasn’t the only event going on at McGuirk arena on Sunday afternoon. The wrestling team shared the arena with the gymnastics team in the inaugural Royal Rumble and Tumble.
Both CMU teams won their respective contests. The wrestling team beat ODU 18-16 and the gymnast’s defeated Mid-American Conference foe Northern Illinois 195.750-189.100.
The event was the brainchild of head coach Tom Borrelli and gymnastics head coach Jerry Reighard, who originally developed the concept of having simultaneous meets four years ago.
“We never felt we had the space in the arena to accomplish it,” Reighard said. “We’ve both been in meets similar to this and it’s always been a great atmosphere.”
One would think that athletes from both sports would be distracted by all the activity happening by while they are competing, but junior wrestler Scotti Sentes said he wasn’t affected when he hit the mat.
“Once you get there out there, you don’t notice anything,” he said. “All I hear is my coaches. I kind of just shut everything else out.”
Although Sentes said the gymnasts didn’t distract him during competition, he joked that he didn’t know what to do when he was on the bench.
“I was kind of a deer caught in headlights, I didn’t know what to expect,” he said. “It was my own fault. (Borrelli) told Christian (Cullinan) what to do and I was supposed to pay attention and I didn’t pay too good attention to what he was telling us to do, and I guess it showed.”
Borrelli said he thought the potentially distracting atmosphere was helpful for his team for when it travels to the NCAA Championships in March.
“At the NCAA Tournament, the first two rounds, there’s eight mats going. So there’s a lot of stuff going on in the arena,” he said. “There’s a lot of noise, a lot of things that were going on today. Our guys have to learn how to focus in that situation if they want to be successful.”
The simultaneous meet was the first of it’s kind for CMU athletics, and both coaches agreed that they they’d enjoy doing it again.
“Anytime you have a big crowd, it’s great for both sports,” he said. “Hopefully we created some more fans in the community. Anytime we can have that environment, it’s good for our whole athletic department.”
