Clint Matter recalls Wrestling dominance in 1997 EIWAs

The Quakers had six champions in the 10 weight classes and set records for most points scored (183) and largest margin of victory (80) as they easily outdistanced second-place Lehigh. The victory was doubly sweet for the Quakers as the Engineers had handed Penn a dual-meet loss only a few weeks before the championship. Among Penn's champions was 177-pound senior Clint Matter. The Quakers' tri-captain, who is tied with Mike Friedman for seventh on Penn's all-time win list with 71, had 30 victories and qualified for Nationals in 1996-97 with his victory at EIWAs. Matter, whose brother Brett currently wrestles for Penn, recalls that magical day in March of 1997 when the Quakers took down the rest of the competition at the Palestra: · Clint Matter: When Penn hosted the EIWA in 1997, we ended up breaking pretty much every record. We beat all the teams within the EIWA. This was after we lost to Lehigh in a dual meet right before the EIWA. We came into the tournament hosted at Penn and sent eight guys to Nationals, which is the most that we had ever sent to Nationals. We had six champions, two other guys in the finals and a fella who took third, so we had nine placewinners in the top three. I think that was probably one of the most dominant performances in recent EIWA history as well as overall EIWA history. We had the largest margin of point victory, scored the most points. That was a whole lot of fun. It was a great testimony to the team as well as the coaching staff. That was what I remember most fondly about my time at Penn on the wrestling team. That was the culmination of not only that year's work but basically a couple year's work, so a lot had been building into that. The program itself has continued to move on from there and reached higher levels of national prominence, so I think that was one step along the way for building the Eastern dominance that Penn has been able to achieve to date. There were quite a few guys who did a whole lot of things pretty incredibly that day. My younger brother [Brett] won his second EIWA title and Andrei Rodzianko -- who graduated last year and was an All-American -- ended up beating a guy [Cornell's Carlos Eason] who was ranked in the top six in the country in the semifinals after having come off a rib injury that had sidelined him for about three months. That was [1998 National runner-up] Brandon Slay's first EIWA title that year. Joey Allen, our heavyweight, beat a guy who was All-American in the semifinals? He ended up losing to a guy who was an Olympian in the finals -- Jason Gleasman from Syracuse -- by a pretty close score, so that was a good tournament for Joey. Our 118-pounder Ben Hatta won the Easterns. Bart Murphy came from the sixth seed at 150 [pounds], defeated three guys who defeated him previously in the year. He didn't give up a takedown the entire tournament, which was a testimony to his style of wrestling and I think that he did a fantastic job that tournament? I beat a guy in the finals who ended up taking third in the NCAAs that year and I beat him 10 to 3? It wasn't all that much fun losing to Lehigh in the dual meet, but it made it a lot much more fun to exact a bit of revenge on them in the Easterns. It's a healthy rivalry between the two teams. It's continued to date. I think the most exciting match I watched was when Andrei Rodzianko beat the guy at 190. He beat a guy named Carlos Eason from Cornell in the semifinals and that was the morning's round. That morning I think we lost one match the entire round. We built a tremendous amount of momentum in the semifinals round. It was great for pretty much everybody in Penn wrestling. We executed a lot of stuff that coach and we had been working on for months and it basically seemed like everything came together that morning's round. We went out there and really proved our dominance throughout almost every weight class. I think we proved that we were the best-prepared team at that point and it was a lot of fun to be a part of that team.