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Wrestling vs Princeton Erich Smith Credit: Pete Lodato , Pete Lodato

You would think a state championship would be enough to boost anyone’s confidence. But then again, you probably aren’t from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. You may not even realize it exists.

But Penn senior wrestler Erich Smith hails from the area known as the U.P., where he won three state championships and accumulated a state record of 170 wins during his high-school career. If that wasn’t enough, in the spring season he played tennis, capturing the 2004 Upper Peninsula doubles championship as well.

However, when he joined the University of Michigan wrestling team, he had a “monstrous stigma” attached to himself, given his hometown.

“Coming from there, that was a big confidence problem,” Smith said.

Covering nearly 30 percent of Michigan’s land area but home to just 3 percent of the state’s population, the U.P. is sparsely populated and unlikely to produce the state’s best athletes.

Even Smith admits that winning a state championship in the U.P. — or three for that matter — should not carry a great deal of weight in the world of athletics.

“Competition-wise … [the U.P. is] not anywhere near the rest of the state,” Smith said.

Facing prejudice and struggling to maintain his confidence, Smith did not find the appropriate support at Michigan. Following his sophomore year, he chose to follow former Wolverine Scott Giffin to Penn, where Giffin had transferred after a year in Ann Arbor.

An All-American his junior season of 2009-10, Giffin attested to the differences in culture between the wrestling programs at Michigan and Penn, emphasizing the “cutthroat” attitude exhibited by Michigan coaches toward competition.

“If you’re not winning, they don’t care about you,” Giffin said. “It’s a business there.”

Michigan certainly boasts one of the best wrestling programs in the country. The Wolverines currently rank sixth in the nation. However, at 20th, Penn also ranks among the top programs in the nation, despite a different approach to its coaching and a different level of attention to wrestlers.

“[Penn coaches] don’t care if you’re 0-100 or if you’re 100-0. … If you want to work hard and you want to get better, they’re going to give you attention,” Giffin said. “That’s the way it should be.”

While Smith may have been overlooked at Michigan, Penn coach Rob Eiter saw “a lot of talent,” even though he “didn’t believe it last year.”

It seems Smith is believing in himself now, as Eiter noted that Smith is working harder than ever to qualify for the NCAA Championships and become an All-American in his senior year. He has started off the season well with a 5-2 performance at the Binghamton Open, which was good enough for fifth place in the 184-pound weight class.

Even in his loss to All-American Steve Bosak of Cornell, Smith demonstrated an improved sense of confidence, according to Eiter.

“From a mental standpoint it was a win for [Smith] … because he battled [Bosak], and last year he was afraid of him,” Eiter said.

In this past weekend’s Keystone Classic at the Palestra, Smith earned another fifth-place finish by defeating Thomas Barreiro of American University, 9-5.

It seems it is time for Smith to take his focus away from where he has come and to set his sights on where he is going.

“He should not have any other thought in his head but to be an All-American,” Eiter said. “If you don’t think that way, you never will be.”

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