Iowa State wrestling brings new attitude into Kevin Dresser’s first season

AMES - Associate coach Mike Zadick ran the first practice of the Kevin Dresser era at Iowa State. He let his grapplers wrestle on their own to see where they were.

They went between three and six minutes before they stopped and took a break. A wrestling match is seven minutes.

'To me, it was literally like if you and your wife or girlfriend going to health club to get a little workout in – it was fitness,” Zadick said. 'We're not here to be fitness instructors or be a part of a fitness program. We're a Division I athletic program that has expectations and the fans obviously do and the administration obviously does because they got rid of the old staff. We had to teach them to invest more into it to get more out of it. That's kind of in the stage of where we're at.”

Redshirt sophomore Markus Simmons (133) said the first workout the staff put them through would've been among the hardest they did all of last season.

Now, the staff has its wrestlers going harder for longer. It strengthens their mental fortitude and it gets them in wrestling shape.

'Zadick said we couldn't get a break unless we break our other partner,” Simmons said. 'They have to say the words ‘I'm done.' That's when you can get a break. A seven-minute go for a match turned into a 30-35 minute go because neither person is wanting to say, ‘I'm done' to either person. You end up wrestling the whole practice. All it does is make it better mentally and physically. I love that about the new staff because they worked a lot with us on mental toughness.”

The wrestlers are also pushing themselves because every spot is up for grabs. Iowa State only has one returning starter at the weight they wrestled last year in Colston DiBlasi (157) – and not even his spot is safe. Chase Straw bumped up form 149 pounds last season to challenge him. Dane Pestano (184) and Marcus Harrington (285) are the other returning starters but they each moved up weight classes for this season.

Dresser loves the open competition.

'That's how it's always going to be,” Dresser said. 'We're bringing in good guys. (At Iowa) I looked at everybody that came in as a training partner and somebody who was going to make me better. If you were going to get the spot, you had to be the best guy, you had to earn it. That's what's going to happen at Iowa State.”

One of the most hotly contested weights is 133 pounds. Simmons and redshirt freshman Ian Parker are battling for the spot. Blue-chip recruit Austin Gomez is waiting in the wings, scraping with both guys to get them better.

'It makes it a lot more exciting in the room,” Parker said. 'It puts a lot more fire in our guys when we're out there brawling to decide who gets the spot. You're actually competing for the spot and those are the guys you're wrestling with every day.”

Last week, Zadick let the team wrestle on their own again.

'I let them go and I said get a drink on your own and I stepped back and watch,” Zadick said. 'That go went 21 minutes. This has happened more than once. I told them after, ‘Hey, when we first got here, your guys' ‘on your own go' was like five minutes long. Your ‘on your own go' now just went 20 minutes and you don't even know it because you don't even realize what your conditioning has done now, what your expectation of yourself is now and now how to break those barriers.'”

Iowa State's wrestlers are fighting harder for longer. It's a new attitude in the room. The wrestlers have to prove everything.

l Comments: benv43@gmail.com