Wrestling third at Tournament of Champions

The Penn wrestling team improved from an eighth place finish at Midlands to place third in Reno, Nevada. Coming off an eighth-place finish at the Midlands Open Tournament at Northwestern University, the Penn wrestling team hit the road for the second leg of their winter break road trip. The Quakers headed to Reno, Nevada, for the Reno Tournament of Champions, where they encountered stiff opposition from some of the best teams in the country, including No. 1 Oklahoma State, No. 4 Arizona State, No. 5 Michigan and No. 19 Rider. According to Penn coach Roger Reina, it was the first time a Quakers team had ever encountered the opportunity to wrestle the country's top ranked team. Seizing the opportunity to gain experience against the nation's finest, Penn wrestled its way to a third place finish. Opening the tournament against top-ranked Oklahoma State, Penn fell 35-3. To put the loss into perspective, however, no team at the tournament scored over three points against Oklahoma, which beat its three opponents by a combined score of 102-9. Highlighting Penn's match against the Cowboys was heavyweight Bandele Adeniyi-Bada's 9-2 victory. "He wrestled very solidly," Reina said. "He dominated his match." Tim Ortman (150 pounds), second-ranked Brandon Slay (167) and Andrei Rodzianko (190) all put up tough fights as well. Ortman and Rodzianko had early leads but could not hang on to win, while Slay lost his match in sudden death overtime. Although the scoreboard was not kind after the match, Reina was pleased with the way his team competed against Oklahoma State, which has not lost more than one match in a dual meet all year. "The experience of having competed against the top team in the country is something that's clearly going to benefit us down the road," Reina said. "We proved to ourselves -- even though it didn't happen --that we are clearly capable of winning four matches against them out of 10, which is more than any team has won against them all year." Bouncing back from the defeat, Penn pounced on Boise State in the consolation semifinals, winning 23-12. The Quakers received close victories from Steve Walker (126) and Yoshi Nakamura (142), and a strong 17-1 technical fall victory from Slay. Based on his No. 2 national ranking, Slay learned over break that he was invited to the National All-Star meet to be held in February. With a win against what Reina termed a "very rugged, very physical" Boise State team, Penn found itself in the third place match against No. 4 Arizona State, who they had met five days earlier at the Midlands. The match never was played, though, as Arizona State forfeited. Having already wrestled three dual meets that day and citing injured and sick wrestlers, Arizona State felt unable to compete in a fourth dual match against Penn, automatically giving the Quakers the third place title. The Quakers were pleased with the third place finish, but were obviously disappointed not to get a chance to compete against Arizona State or Michigan. "That was frustrating because those were both teams we felt we matched up with very well," Reina said. "That would have been a good opportunity? to turn it around at that match," team captain Rodzianko added. "But they didn't want to wrestle, so you can't just make them." The third and final stop on Penn's road trip was a dual meet at Stanford, which the Quakers took easily, 28-6. Penn won all but two bouts, taking its dual meet record to 2-1. "Given the length of the road trip, and Stanford being on the tail end of it," said Reina, "I was happy to come out with a win in seven of the nine bouts that were competed." After facing the best programs in the country all break, Penn emphatically defeated the overmatched Cardinals. The win against Stanford capped off a solid road trip for the Quakers, after much traveling and grueling competition. "After a long trip like that," senior captain Mark Piotrowsky said, "it was pretty nice to get that solid victory." Overall, the winter break road trip was a successful one. On the strength of the eighth-place finish at the Midlands and the third-place showing at Reno, Penn's national ranking moved to No. 12, up two from its No. 14 mark at the beginning of the season.