Practice began for the Buckeyes on September 10th. Our pre-season ran from September 10th to October 21st. During this time there was a heavy emphasis on several areas of our student-athletes development which include strength, conditioning, mental toughness, team unity and basic technical skills. We also spent a lot of time with our freshman class in assisting them with the sometimes difficult transition from high school to college life. We brought in several motivational speakers such as Chris Spielman to talk to our team about the importance of leadership and good decision making skills.

This is always a grueling time of the season and one of the hardest training periods of the year. As a staff we are challenging the team physically and mentally and building a solid base of conditioning. One key for this team and any team for that matter to win at the highest level is to practice at a very high level of intensity. To date this team has accepted the challenge and our intensity level has picked up from last year. Obviously, with four returning All-Americans and a host of talented others our expectations are high.

Like any great team the emphasis is always on improvement. There are a lot of things many of our team members do well already. We want to further develop those areas, but really key in on how each of our potential starters can improve. We do not place a tremendous amount of energy or discuss our national ranking or the ranking of any individual. We recognize the expectations for this Buckeye team and need to keep our focus on how we can get better. The recent addition of Joe Ryan as our Director of Operations will assist us in the area of video analysis. He is very good at breaking down video allowing us to show each student what they did well and where they need to work.

One of our main challenges this year will be to get our true freshman in the line-up prepared for the grueling Big Ten schedule. Lance Palmer responded like we thought he would last year. He is a ferocious competitor. Lance Palmer and Mike Pucillo placing in the NCAA’s as freshman assisted us with establishing a “real” standard for freshman. This pre-season we printed a poster titled “Wanted: Freshman All-Americans” which featured every freshman AA in the history of the Ohio State Wrestling program. It is very important for the mind to realize that what one is aspiring for can be done. Our freshman have a visual of this every day as the poster is located in several locations around our facility.

In addition, we have blown up the photo of our 1951 Big Ten Championship Wrestling team and will place it in two locations. This poster will remain up until the next Big Ten Championship team is crowned.

With a supportive administration, great staff and highly inspired student-athletes that want to be a part of this great institution it only makes sense that our friends would expect us to be great. We are all up for the challenge.