Takedown Report

College Wrestling News — # 91

Mike Denney – 7x NCAA Champion Coach
Mike Denney is a 7x national champion coach. Having coached for over 51 years, Coach Denney spent his first 32 years at the University of Nebraska Omaha (UNO). On the night of his 7th national team title, the UNO AD called Coach Denney and told him that wrestling was being cut. It was a shock to the wrestling world. Today, Coach Denney is the head coach at Maryville.
SPONSOR
This episode is brought to you by Gable the GOAT Part 2, which covers the life of Dan Gable from 1987-1993. Unlike our weekly show, this is a fully produced documentary podcast. You can find Gable the GOAT Part 2 in this …. rest of story and audio at https://wrestlingchangedmylife.com/denney/?mc_cid=864912e0e4&mc_eid=2ef7cbca4b

NCAA Div. I won’t extend eligibility for wrestlers and all winter sport athletes which lost championships
BY USA WRESTLING | MARCH 30, 2020 In two sentences, the NCAA Div. I Council squashed the hopes of the wrestlers who were unable to compete at the NCAA Div. I Championships, who hoped to get an extra year to make up for the lost opportunity. This was included in the seventh paragraph of a release entitled: “Division I Council extends eligibility for student-athletes impacted by COVID-19”
Winter sports were not included in the decision. Council members declined to extend eligibility for student-athletes in sports where all or much of their regular seasons were completed.
Let the debate begin.
Complete NCAA news release:
Division I Council extends eligibility for student-athletes impacted by COVID-19
Schools can authorize an additional season of competition and an extension of their period of eligibility March 30, 2020
The Division I Council on Monday voted to allow schools to provide spring-sport student-athletes an additional season of competition and an extension of their period of eligibility. Members also adjusted financial aid rules to allow teams to carry more members on scholarship to account for incoming recruits and student-athletes who had been in their last year of eligibility who decide to stay. In a nod to the financial uncertainty faced by higher education, the Council vote also provided schools with the flexibility to give students the opportunity to return for 2020-21 without requiring that athletics aid be provided at the same level awarded for 2019-20. This flexibility applies only to student-athletes who would have exhausted eligibility in 2019-20. …. story at https://www.teamusa.org/USA-Wrestling/Features/2020/March/30/NCAA-wont-give-wrestlers-extra-year-after-Div-I-Championships-cancelled?mc_cid=864912e0e4&mc_eid=2ef7cbca4b

Penn State wrestling’s Shakur Rasheed urges NCAA to reconsider winter sport athlete eligibility in lengthy Instagram post
Penn State senior Shakur Rasheed took to Instagram addressing wrestlers, fans and wrestling platforms whom he urged to help fight for an extra year of eligibility for winter sport athletes. The post comes one day after the announcement by the NCAA granting spring athletes an extra year, but not winter athletes. Rasheed started off by stating his understanding of the situation, saying that the season being cut short is “nobody’s fault” and it had to be done. However, he thought the NCAA did not do winter athletes “right” when the organization did not include them in their blanket waiver. “We all go into a year with one main goal and that is to win a national title or All-American or simply compete at the NCAA tournament and give it everything we’ve got,” Rasheed wrote. “While many people dream to have the opportunity to do those things, it was not a dream for us. It was our reality. So no I cannot accept that this is it.” He also stressed the importance of the tournament itself being at the core of the collegiate season, and the coronavirus, which caused the cancellation, “shouldn’t be the end of the 2020 seniors story.” …. story at https://www.collegian.psu.edu/sports/wrestling/article_1b4de602-739f-11ea-bb82-4b44f14811f8.html?mc_cid=1f2298c90d&mc_eid=2ef7cbca4b

Tom Brands hints at future legal appeal to recover year of Spencer Lee’s eligibility
Tom Brands is serious about the fight against COVID-19. The Iowa wrestling coach, during a 45-minute teleconference Tuesday, acknowledged that he was in Day 6 of a seven-day quarantine at his Iowa City home because he was informed he had been in contact recently with someone who was diagnosed with the novel coronavirus. “I’m fine,” he said, noting he had no symptoms and has only been out of the house to go jogging. Brands calls COVID-19 “Enemy No. 1” right now, with an eye on future appeals about eligibility relief officially denied by the NCAA Monday night to winter-sports athletes.  …. story at https://www.hawkcentral.com/story/sports/college/iowa/wrestling/2020/03/31/tom-brands-appeal-recover-spencer-lee-eligibility-iowa-wrestling-coronavirus/5096975002/?mc_cid=1f2298c90d&mc_eid=2ef7cbca4b

OSU Wrestling: Kaid Brock Receives Sixth Year of Eligibility
Pistols Firing spoke with Oklahoma State head coach John Smith on Thursday and Coach Smith divulged that Kaid Brock has received his medical redshirt and sixth year of eligibility. Smith came on the Pistols Firing Podcast to discuss the unique end to this wrestling season and a number of other topics as well. I asked about Kaid Brock’s situation and he said he has received a medical redshirt and an additional year. …. story at https://pistolsfiringblog.com/osu-wrestling-kaid-brock-receives-sixth-year-of-eligibility/?mc_cid=e9d5e5bec8&mc_eid=2ef7cbca4b

Leistikow: Making sense of NCAA’s spring eligibility vote and the uncertainty still ahead
To grasp how important Monday night’s NCAA Division I Council approval to extend the eligibility for spring sports athletes was, let’s first flash back to the afternoon of March 12.
While the high-profile cancellations of the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments — the end of March Madness — was front and center, a glance to a roadside pit stop in Indiana illustrated the heartache felt among lower-profile athletes. Elise van Heuvelen Treadwell, a senior women’s tennis player at Iowa, and her teammates and coaches were on their way to road matches at Indiana and Purdue once the news hit that their seasons were canceled amid the concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic. A three-time all-Big Ten player from England, van Heuvelen Treadwell assumed that was how her collegiate career would end.
“March 12 is going to be one of those days I’m not going to forget for the rest of my life,” she recalled Monday night. “We were driving two Suburbans, and we just stopped off the highway and stood in this random field in Indiana. And we were just heartbroken.” But on Monday night, van Heuvelen Treadwell and thousands of athletes around the country officially received a lifeline of opportunity, hopefully, to come back to school and compete in college again. “Today’s one of those good days,” she added, “where we can start looking forward and thinking about those options.” For van Heuvelen Treadwell, there’s confidence that scholarship money will be there. But even a star player like her isn’t entirely sure. Others are feeling less confident in the wake of Monday’s decision. Although seniors can come back to school for an additional year without counting against scholarship limits, the key asterisk in blanket eligibility relief was that individual institutions will determine the level of scholarship money available for them. For example, an athlete that had a 50% scholarship might have to be reduced to 25% or zero.  There’s no telling what budgets will look like six or 12 months from now, with growing uncertainty about the ability to execute a season of football — the financial engine that drives all college sports. …. story at https://www.hawkcentral.com/story/sports/college/columnists/chad-leistikow/2020/03/31/ncaa-athletes-eligibility-extended-spring-vote-uncertainty-ahead-iowa-hawkeyes/5089920002/?mc_cid=1f2298c90d&mc_eid=2ef7cbca4b

Brands: ‘Let’s Beat This COVID-19’
By DARREN MILLER hawkeyesports.com
IOWA CITY, Iowa — Wrestlers from the University of Iowa will be ready for their next challenge, head coach Tom Brands said Tuesday. First, like everyone else in the world, they are challenged by COVID-19.
“Let’s beat this COVID-19,” Brands said via teleconference. “It is bigger than sports right now. We’re not out of the woods with COVID-19. Let’s get rid of COVID-19 first.”
Tuesday marked 10 days from what would have been the final sessions of the 2020 NCAA Championships in Minneapolis. That event, of course, was canceled March 12 because of the coronavirus pandemic known as COVID-19. As a team, Iowa was a unanimous favorite with three No. 1 seeds and seven others in the top 11.
“It sucks, this team was robbed of history,” Brands said. “They were robbed of an opportunity.”
In the meantime, Brands said the Hawkeye wrestlers are focused on academics, being safe and socially responsible, and staying healthy.
“There are a lot of ways to keep an edge or build an edge and keep moving forward,” Brands said. “It’s not ideal because it’s not familiar. It’s not ideal because it isn’t necessarily what they want. They want to be in their domain, sanctuary, comfort zone.”
Brands praised his student-athletes for their maturity and open-minded thinking.
“They are chomping at the bit, of course,” Brands said. “Right now they have to be patient because they don’t know the calendar footprint, they don’t know if there is going to be school next year.” …. story at https://hawkeyesports.com/news/2020/3/31/wrestling-brands-lets-beat-this-covid-19.aspx?mc_cid=1f2298c90d&mc_eid=2ef7cbca4b

April 17, 2020 - Posted by The TakeDown Report | Uncategorized