A valuable learning experience was probably the biggest takeaway from our outing at the Messiah Petrofes Invitational over the weekend. Here is my summary:
THE GOOD:
We improved. Last year we only won 3 or 4 matches total and advanced no one, and that was with a full team. This year, with only 5 wrestlers that could score points and 7 in total, we placed 2 and won 13 total matches. So one could say that we are continuing to improve. Certainly the Thanksgiving break didn't help us out, and we were missing Stueben and Fessel (who I feel both would have placed) due to injuries. We also learned some things about ourselves and hopefully now have some added motivation to bust it a little more at practice.
THE BAD:
If I had one thing to sum it all up, it was that we looked young. We were so close to having 3 in the championship semis, and many of the matches that we lost simply came down to us making one mistake and the other guy capitalizing. The good news about the bad news is that we are, in fact, a very young team. The Petrofes is a 32-man bracket meat-grinder, and when you're a first-year and unseeded wrestler, you aren't going to get any easy matches, and we didn't. We learned a lot about ourselves, where we are, what we need to focus and improve on. Although I am disappointed with the end results of the Petrofes, I anticipate that we will look back at this experience as another turning point in the continued improvement of the program.
We wrestle Southern Virginia University this Wednesday, at home in Doremus Gymnasium at 7pm. We have a short 2 days to prepare, but we are looking forward to getting back out there and getting a win under our belts before exams and winter break begin.
