For Hall, a Wisconsin native, the journey is two-fold. First is to continue to build world-level Greco-Roman athletes from the USOEC, and the second, to finish his degree.

List to what Hall has to say about his new post.

Minnesota native Chas Betts came out of one of the state’s top high school programs at St. Michael-Albertville, but wrestling at the NCAA level didn’t really come into play. With the formation of the U.S. Olympic Education Center at Northern Michigan, Betts knew what his calling would be — Greco-Roman.

Betts topped T.C. Dantlzer at the World Team Trials to earn a trip to Denmark and his first U.S. World Team. What does Betts believe helped him through the Trials and what does he need to improve on? Find out?

In a weight known for World & Olympic medalists like Garrett Lowney, Justin Ruiz and Adam Wheeler, Johnson makes his first World Team and looks to continue the tradition. But Johnson isn’t some dumb jock, the Computer Science major is putting his degree to work for him while working towards a World Championship.

What does Mango have in mind to prepare for the 2009 World Championships? How has Greco been most exciting for him? Find out by listening below.

Now you can add two-time Greco-Roman Olympian Jim Gruenwald to that list. Gruenwald accepted the head coaching position at Division III Wheaton earlier in the week and has realistic, but high expectations of his new program. Gruenwald talked to Wrestling 411 on Wednesday about his role with the new job and where his involvement with the U.S. Greco-Roman program will be. Gruenwald spent four years as an assistant coach at the U.S. Olympic Education Center at Northern Michigan under coach Ivan Ivanov.

Jim’s a great speaker and he gives tremendous insight on small-school wrestling, training for the Olympics and coaching in general.

Listen below.

Photo by Larry Slater

Hello wrestling world,

So we just got back from weigh-ins about an hour and half ago and I’m a good three kilos heavier. We drove from our hotel the Crowne Plaza to the tournament site and checked our weight,

I was .1 kg over and I was not happy at all. So Coach Lewis (Army coach) and I walked to the sauna and I lost the .1 pretty quickly. They started weigh-in a little early about five minutes early which was extremely nice, after we made weight we drew our number from some sticks.

I went back and sat down by the mats with the rest of Team USA and had some hot tea and water,etc. We headed back on the bus to our hotel, on the bus we saw a lot of neat things, one in particular thing we saw was this guy on the street that was twirling ropes and at the end of them was fire (pretty neat).

Once we got back to the hotel, we all unloaded our stuff from weigh-ins and headed to dinner in the hotel. The food was all really good as usual. Now we are all just relaxing and focusing on our task at hand to bring the gold medal back to the USA.

There are anywhere between 3-10 guys in each weight class I think, but don’t hold me to that. We begin wrestling at 9 a.m. at the arena in Venezuela! Time to get a little more liquids in me and maybe another bite to eat. Take care and I’ll get back to you guys after competition.

Nate Engel

I’m going to try to update you on the trip at least once a day if not more to let you know how the trip and tournament is going.

My trip started at 3 a.m. on Monday morning in Marquette with Spenser Mango, who is wrestling 60kg. The weather was cold and started to snow as we drove the three and half hours to Green Bay, Wisc., to start our long trip to Venezuela.

Our plane left at 7:10 and headed to Detroit to make our connecting flight to Miami to meet the rest of Team USA. When we arrived in Miami, we had to get our bags and change from Northwest Airlines to Santa Barbara Airlines, which I’d never heard of in my life (I have not done a lot of traveling, but enough and never heard of it before).

When we were checking in we saw one of our coaches Rob Herman (from Pensacola and coaches the Navy team). We all three checked in and headed to our gate were we meet up with our heavyweight Brandon Rupp, and the Marines coach Jay Antonelli.  We arrived in Venezuela around 7:30 p.m. (keep in mind that its 30 minutes behind Eastern Time), when we arrived the airport was packed as we waited for our luggage.

After getting our luggage we headed out and meet up with the Army team members who are wrestling on Team USA as well (Coach Shon Lewis, Aaron Sieracki, Brad Ahearn, Faruk Sahin, and Jess Hargrave). We boarded a bus with the womens team from Canada and headed to the Crowne Plaza.
The hotel was extremely nice. We got into our rooms and everyone had dinner and then proceeded to lose some weight (we weigh in Wednesday).
I think everyone’s weight is pretty good as far as I know, including our 60kg Spenser Mango. Then we headed to bed, and got up in the morning to a buffet style breakfast, which was pretty good.

A group of us decided to take a taxi to the grocery store to get drinks and some food as well to snack on. The water here is what you can call “dirty water”, so we got a lot of bottles of water so we do not get sick.

The reason we traveled in a group is because there is a high number of homocides and kidnappings in the country as well as robberies — especially in the town we are in. We got our groceries and headed back to our hotel to rest until we work out tonight to get down close to weight, and hopefully enjoy a nice dinner and head to bed!

PAN AMERICAN WRESTLING CHAMPIONSHIPS
At Maracaibo, Venezuela, April 23-25

U.S. Greco-Roman team
55 kg/121 lbs. – Nate Engel, St. Helena, Calif. (Sunkist Kids)
60 kg/132 lbs. – Spenser Mango, St. Louis, Mo. (New York AC)
66 kg/145.5 lbs. – Faruk Sahin, Colorado Springs, Colo. (U.S. Army)
74 kg/163 lbs. – Jess Hargrave, Colorado Springs, Colo. (U.S. Army)
84 kg/185 lbs. – Aaron Sieracki, Colorado Springs, Colo. (U.S. Army)
96 kg/211.5 lbs. – Brad Ahearn, Colorado Springs, Colo. (U.S. Army)
120 kg/264.5 lbs. – Brandon Rupp, Colorado Springs, Colo. (New York AC)
Coach – Jay Antonelli (Chesapeake, Va.), Rob Hermann (Pensacola, Fla.)

U.S. men’s freestyle team
55 kg/121 lbs. – Obe Blanc, Naples, Fla. (Gator WC)
60 kg/132 lbs. – Matt Valenti, New York, N.Y. (New York AC)
66 kg/145.5 lbs. – Brent Metcalf, Davison, Mich. (Gator WC)
74 kg/163 lbs. – Jon Reader, Davison, Mich. (Cyclone WC)
84 kg/185 lbs. – Eric Luedke, Iowa City, Iowa (Gator WC)
96 kg/211.5 lbs. – Kyle Cerminara, Lewiston, Pa. (New York AC)
120 kg/264.5 lbs. – Steve Mocco, Coralville, Iowa (New York AC)
Coaches – Bill Zadick (Colorado Springs, Colo.), Lou Rosselli (Columbus, Ohio)

U.S. women’s freestyle team
48 kg/105.5 lbs. – Clarissa Chun, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Sunkist Kids)
51 kg/112.25 lbs. – Alyssa Lampe, Tomahawk, Wis. (Sunkist Kids)
55 kg/121 lbs. – Helen Maroulis, Rockville, Md. (New York AC)
59 kg/130 lbs. – Kelsey Campbell, Milwaukie, Ore. (Sunkist Kids)
63 kg/138.75 lbs. – Elena Pirozkhova, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Gator WC)
67 kg/147.5 lbs. – Sheila McCabe, San Diego, Calif. (OCU Stars)
72 kg/158.5 lbs. – Jenna Pavlik, Colorado Springs, Colo. (USOTC)
Coaches – Terry Steiner (Colorado Springs, Colo.), Izzy Izboinikov (Colorado Springs, Colo.)

Pan American Championships schedule

Thursday, April 23
9:00 a.m. – Greco-Roman qualification rounds
5:00 p.m. – Opening Ceremonies
6:00 p.m. – Repechage and Medal Matches in Greco-Roman

Friday, April 24
9:00 a.m. – Women’s freestyle qualification rounds
5:00 p.m. – Repechage and Medal Matches in Women’s freestyle

Saturday, April 25
9:00 a.m. – Men’s freestyle qualification rounds
5:00 p.m. – Repechage and Medal Matches in Men’s freestyle

Video from Thursday’s show with Harry Lester and Chris Pendleton.

Chris Pendleton, assistant coach at Oklahoma State, talks about his career in Stillwater, coaching and the season gone by for the Cowboys. Pendleton provided a spirited commentary on wrestling, his toughest opponents and the best Mexican restaurant in Stillwater.

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