ACC Season is Upon Us!
Keeping Hokie fans plugged into the progress of our program is very important, especially as we enter the most important part of our season this weekend at the University of Maryland. The ACC season opens up this Saturday at Maryland and our guys know the importance of these dual meets.

From a coaching staff perspective, we are very much heading in the right direction as a program!!! Individually, we have some young guys progressing very nicely. To think you can have true freshmen like Chris Diaz, Tommy Spellman and David Marone competing with the very best as true freshman is very exciting. Justin Staylor is just starting to get in shape. Nick Murray and Matt Epperly are just starting to figure out the difference between Division-I wrestling and high school wrestling. Matt Rosen and Andre Johnson are improving and are both very undersized for their weight class, however I am HOPING that we are going to see improvement in the second part of this season!! They are working very hard. Eric Decker and Kevin O'Connor are having good seasons and we are working DAILY on getting them both more offensive. Most importantly, we finally have 10 guys who are on the same page, very coachable and want to win. That is nice!!

Our message to our guys as we begin our ACC dual meet season is simply EXCITEMENT. It is important for them to be excited for this opportunity and it is also important for them to make this part of the season as much FUN as possible. Sometimes the sport of wrestling isn't fun, so being able to mentally get excited and have fun as we go into the home stretch is very important. It is such a mental sport, especially for the young guys!! It is hard to sell FUN when we are in the middle of two a days, however this group is BUYING INTO what it takes to improve and get better. WE turned up the heat training-wise on January 1, 2008 and we are now starting to see the results in most weight classes!!

Schedule-wise, please get on hokiesports.com and make plans to come see us!! WE have five dual meets at the Cassell starting on Saturday, Jan. 26 vs. UNC. We wrestle the following day (Sunday) in Richmond vs. Virginia. In a nutshell, we have a bunch of dual meets from here until the end of February.

Lastly, I am asking all fans and alum to contact me by email or forward this post on ... concerning an alumni weekend we are planning for one of our home matches in early FEB. We are also going to honor former long-time wrestling coach, Jerry Cheynet. We want all former wrestlers who wrestled for Coach Cheynet to come back to honor my good friend. So please email me (kdresser@vt.edu) or forward this on to any Hokie wrestling fans and especially former wrestlers. It looks like we are going to try and schedule that event for the Feb. 9 match vs. Chattanooga. Stay tuned. I will post that information as soon as it is confirmed. It will be a great event and much overdue!!

Thank you and I appreciate all the support. I CHALLENGE you to get to the Cassell this season!! I have still have a personal goal of putting 5,000 people in the Cassell for a home dual meet. Please be a part of that milestone.

Go Hokies!!

Coach Dresser

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December Wrestling Camp Announcement
Kevin Dresser Wrestling Camps are running a three-day Holiday Break Training Camp in Blacksburg from Thursday, Dec. 20 until Saturday, Dec. 22.

This training opportunity is open to grades 9-through-12. Registration will be at 3 p.m., sharp at Cassell Coliseum on the second floor, on Thursday, Dec. 20.

Fees are $75 for three days (all four sessions) or $30 per session. Fees will be collected at registration as well as insurance information. ALL wrestlers MUST bring a copy of their INSURANCE CARD in order to participate.

Sessions will be run by Coach Dresser and Coach Yetzer from Virginia Tech, along with head coach Daryl Weber from Christiansburg High.

Session Times:

Thursday

Registration - 3 pm

Session One - 3:30 pm

Friday

Session Two - 9 am

Session Three - 3:30 pm

Saturday

Session Four - 10 am

Please email Coach Robie at trobie@vt.edu or call (540) 231-1135 for further information. You can also check out our Web site at: http://www.kevindresserwrestlingcamps.com/

All wrestlers need to bring wrestling shoes, running shoes and a headgear.

We will work hard!!

Coach Robie

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It's All About Competition
We've been training as team since the end of August and as a coaching staff, we are pretty excited about what we've seen from our very young team. With several good weeks of practice under our belts in the wrestling room, it is now time to see what we are all about when the lights turn on and there are people in the stands watching.

It's sometimes difficult to evaluate your wrestlers when they are wrestling their own teammates in a practice setting. I try not to get to excited one way or the other until I see them compete, at least a few times. This weekend's match up against Appalachian State will be a good measuring stick, as the Mountaineers have three wrestlers ranked in the top 20.

We are particularly excited to see the 133-pound match. Senior Terreyl Williams of Appalachian State in ranked 18th in the country. He will face Hokie true freshman Nick Murray. Nick has already established himself as perhaps the hardest worker on the team. He lives by the philosophy "twice a day every day" (meaning workouts). Don't be surprised if you see this true freshman pull off the upset. I can guarantee you that he will leave everything on the mat - that's just the way he is!

Another interesting match up is at 174 pounds. Hokie sophomore Eric Decker is currently wrestling up from last season's weight of 165. Eric has certified at 165 and is taking the first couple of competitions to decide if he wants to make the descent back down or if he is better suited at 174. This weekend's match against nationally ranked Neal Martin (#19) should help him make that decision. Martin, a fellow upstate New York native, is great from the top position and will provide Eric a good test this early in the season. The thing that I like most about Eric Decker is that he finds ways to win matches. It's not always pretty, and it may never be pretty, but at the end of the day he usually gets his hand raised.

We are not really sure what to expect Sunday evening at Cassell Coliseum. If you are in attendance or watching on ACC Select, you will see six freshman (5 of them true freshman), and four sophomores (3 of them true sophomores) take the mat. What I do know is that we will find out a lot about this young Hokie team when the whistle blows!

GO HOKIES!

Coach Robie

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