UNC wrestling looks for a win in home matches
Despite losing two dual matches on the road last weekend, the North Carolina wrestling team is starting to find its form.
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Despite losing two dual matches on the road last weekend, the North Carolina wrestling team is starting to find its form.
The North Carolina wrestling team had yet to score when redshirt senior Mike Rappo took to the mat for his 141-pound bout. He was determined to change that.
For 11 minutes Ben Brooks wrestled, and for 11 minutes Carmichael Arena crackled with energy.
The “Battle of the Blues” between the North Carolina wrestling team and Duke didn’t live up to its billing, since there wasn’t even a battle in two weight classes.
The North Carolina wrestling team defeated Duke on Tuesday for the seventh straight meeting to pick up the Tar Heels’ first win in conference play.
The action on the mat in Carmichael Arena was much more competitive than the scoreboard indicated in the first half of the wrestling doubleheader Saturday.
Facing No. 4 Virginia Tech, the North Carolina wrestling team was struggling and the Tar Heels couldn’t find an answer.
The North Carolina wrestling team is returning to Carmichael Arena for the first time in more than a year, but this time the competition will be stiffer than the Duke team the Tar Heels rolled last season.
Greeted by frigid temperatures and even stiffer competition, the North Carolina wrestling team had a less-than-pleasant weekend in northern territory.
The North Carolina wrestling team took away two out of three duals Sunday at the 2010 ACC Challenge in Chapel Hill.
A young North Carolina wrestling team got a taste of nationally ranked competition Sunday, and it was a healthy dose.
A young man stands alone in a large, dim arena. Sweat rains down his face; his dark hair sits matted against his forehead. It’s 1979, and he has just lost the most important match of his wrestling career. This wasn’t part of his plan, not the initial schematics. The shouts of the surrounding crowd pierce the air, but the young man remains stoic.
RALEIGH — Twenty seconds.That’s all that separated North Carolina’s Kyle Kiss from a place in the 165-pound finals of the ACC Wrestling Championships and a bid to the NCAA Tournament in Omaha.The redshirt sophomore had out-wrestled Virginia Tech’s Matt Epperly, the 2008 tournament’s Most Outstanding Wrestler, throughout the contest and led 6-5 when the referee brought the pair to their feet.Epperly lunged at Kiss’ leg, but the referee called him for a false start. When Kiss failed to shift his feet before the restart, Epperly saw an opening and struck. The resulting single-leg takedown earned Epperly a 7-6 win.“It’s just like, a little slip-up. I lost my focus there; it just hurts,” Kiss said. “I’ve rethought it in my head like 100 times where it would have been different.”It was that sort of day for the Tar Heels, who finished fourth in the six-team tournament and did not produce an individual conference champion for the first time in 37 years. The result matched the Tar Heels’ fourth-place finish during the regular season.“Pretty much everything went the way it was supposed to go today from the standpoint of how it looked on paper,” coach C.D. Mock said. “I was hoping that we would be able to put together a few upsets, but we weren’t.”Despite finishing 40.5 points behind champions Virginia, three Tar Heels managed to secure NCAA Tournament bids.Eighteenth-ranked Dennis Drury became the first Tar Heel to qualify by avenging a regular-season loss against No. 17 Brent Jones of Virginia with a 7-4 victory in the 197-pound semifinals.The senior’s final ACC Tournament was ended by its Most Outstanding Wrestler, No. 3 Hudson Taylor of Maryland, who replicated his regular-season bout by again pinning Drury in the second period. Drury led 2-0 after the first period but was unable to stay off his back after the two-time All-American gained top position in the second.“Our goal of not getting underneath Hudson Taylor is kind of like walking into a building that’s going to be blown up and hoping you don’t get killed,” Mock said.Drury will be joined in Omaha by teammates Ziad Haddad, who finished second at heavyweight and Thomas Scotton, who came in third at 157 pounds. While Haddad qualified by winning his first match of the day, Scotton’s NCAA bid was harder to come by.After starting the season by winning 22 of his first 24 matches, Scotton was just one loss away from missing the NCAA’s after dry-heaving throughout a 5-0 loss to Maryland’s Kyle John.“I definitely was scared,” Scotton said. “I hoped to God, I was like, ‘Please, man, don’t let me throw up or anything.’”Fortunately for Scotton, his nausea subsided midway through his next match as he won his final two bouts to clinch a bronze medal and a second-straight trip to nationals.Mock said he’s hoping the team’s new facilities, scheduled to open this August, will allow his program to catch up.“We have a lot of work to do, and I think now we have the assets to be able to do that work.”Contact the Sports Editor at sports@unc.edu.
ACC Wrestling Championships
For two weeks, coach C.D. Mock tortured the North Carolina wrestling team with practice twice a day. The wrestlers met in the morning to run sprints in Eddie Smith Field House and up the stairs of Kenan Stadium. They came back in the afternoon to practice. Then they ran some more.Now, Mock is hoping for one last run from his beaten and battered grapplers — this time to an ACC Championship.Not much will be expected of the Tar Heels (7-8-1, 2-3 ACC) when they enter N.C. State’s Reynolds Coliseum for the championship tournament Saturday. The team has been beset by injuries all season and finished the regular season fourth in the six-team ACC.But since NCAA Tournament bids are allocated based on how well a wrestler performs at his conference tournament, Saturday offers each of the team’s 10 starters an opportunity to make their season a successful one.“The season doesn’t really matter,” sophomore 165-pounder Kyle Kiss said. “This is the only part of the season that does matter, so I’m really excited, and I hope we can come out and have a good tournament.”UNC’s lineup sports three virtual locks to qualify for NCAAs: Thomas Scotton at 157 pounds, No. 18 Dennis Drury at 197 pounds and Ziad Haddad at heavyweight. The team will need to get strong performances from wrestlers in the middle of the team’s pecking order like 133-pounder Jeremy Shaw.Despite early season struggles, Shaw has turned his senior campaign around, winning his last six bouts and 12 of the last 15.“He’s wrestled like a man on fire,” Scotton said. “I’ve just noticed such a difference between the way he was wrestling in November and now.”Shaw’s transformation has been so impressive that Mock said he believes he has a good shot at beating returning All-American Steven Bell of Maryland to win the entire tournament.“Is there any other school in the ACC that’s thinking Jeremy Shaw is going to win the tournament this weekend?” Mock said. “No, but we do. We’ve watched him; we’ve seen his progression. He’s absolutely capable of it, and in fact, I’m predicting it.”Mike Rappo, a 141-pounder, is also hoping to overcome early-season struggles on Saturday.An NCAA qualifier last year, Rappo has spent the year moving back and forth between the starting lineup and the disabled list.Rather than miss the tournament, Rappo said he plans to tape up his dislocated elbow and see what happens.“He’s going to have a lot of pain, and he knows that,” Mock said. “It takes an extremely tough human being to not have that affect your performance.”But despite his teammates’ injuries and the low expectations held by the rest of the league, Shaw said the Tar Heels will thrive as underdogs.“In a way, the adversity has kind of shaped this team and made us a lot closer and more unified,” he said. “I think that’s going to pay big results come this weekend.”Contact the Sports Editor at sports@unc.edu.
People love and respect a man who rises from the ashes.Ziad Haddad first heard those words from his uncle following his freshman year. They reverberated in his head like a challenge, but one he wasn’t used to.Less than a year later, those words are his story.A former high school national champion, Haddad fell into the fire of academic ineligibility at the end of his redshirt freshman campaign. Now the Pennsylvania native is back on the mat, riding a four-match win streak and ranked No. 21 in the nation after regaining it.Developing a championHaddad was born a competitor. Three brothers, one sister and countless games of Monopoly. It isn’t what’s written about North Carolina’s 6-foot-2, 240-pound heavyweight wrestler in any media guide. It’s just who he is. Haddad spent his high school years at Bethlehem Catholic in Pennsylvania where his father, Tarik, coached football.“My father was the catalyst in everything I’ve done up to this point,” Haddad said. “He’s been my biggest supporter, my biggest fan and he’s also been my biggest critic. “He always calls a spade a spade and I couldn’t ask for anything more from a father.”Haddad started under his father for three years and wrestled throughout high school, but it wasn’t until his junior year that he had something special with wrestling.Wrestling was his ticket. A full season of tirelessly practicing placed Haddad in the state finals match as a junior. Twenty-eight seconds later, Haddad was the state runner-up. “I worked so hard and wanted it so bad and knew in my heart that I was going to achieve that dream,” Haddad said. “And then when I got pinned in 28 seconds, I wanted answers.”But there weren’t any — not at first. “There was only one person that I could ask for answers why, and that was the Lord,” Haddad said. “It was at that moment that I said, ‘OK, God, I’m going to praise you in this storm.’ From that moment on, I became a man of faith.”One year later, Haddad’s answer was validated. He won both the state and national championship.Recruitment processHaddad had a horde of serious offers from schools like Indiana, Oklahoma State and Michigan.North Carolina isn’t a traditional wrestling powerhouse. It isn’t the Iowa of the South, and when Haddad spoke to UNC coach C.D. Mock, the prized recruit was staring at a large part of the program’s history. Haddad saw himself becoming a part of that history.As UNC’s first wrestling national champion in 1982, Mock inspired Haddad to believe that he could once again become a national champion at North Carolina.“I believed that from the minute I signed the paper,” Haddad said.During his redshirt season, he quickly learned that collegiate wrestling was no simple task. It took Haddad nearly two months to record his first takedown, a proficiency he mastered in high school. “I think a lot of Z’s problems had to do with the fact that he wasn’t used to getting worked in practice,” Mock said. “That’s hard to swallow if you’re not ready for that.”Friend in foodCraig Samuels first met Haddad when the redshirt freshman walked into Franklin Street Pizza & Pasta, which Samuels owns. A long-time supporter of UNC’s wrestling team and a wrestling coach at Culbreth Middle School, Samuels befriended Haddad.The restaurant became one of Haddad’s favorites for a number of reasons. He enjoyed everything from its signature penne in a pink basil sauce to his talks with Samuels about wrestling and life. What Haddad orders isn’t on the menu. It’s called “the usual.” By now, the employees know exactly what that entails. A garden salad, the penne with pink basil sauce, a slice of Sicilian pizza and the occasional Philly cheesesteak for that familiar taste from home. It totals $22.45. “I’ve never actually seen a human being eat as much as he does,” Samuels said. “He used to order, well, still does, like three main courses and I’m like, ‘This guy can’t finish this food, no way.’ And I look up, and all the plates are empty.”Often Samuels and his eighth-grade son Jake, a 119-pound wrestler at Culbreth, attend UNC wrestling matches to support the team and Haddad, who has offered Samuels and his son wrestling advice.“We have that sort of relationship where Craig can open up to me and ask me for help when it comes up because, you know, I was there once,” Haddad said. “I was an eighth-grade wrestler.”This year, when Jake wrestled a rematch against the only opponent who had beaten him, Haddad gave Samuels advice to pass along to him.“I just said to him, ‘Every time you step out on the mat nerves are a part of everything. Nerves are a part of your life and everything you do in every aspect of life.’”Classroom strugglesNot too far into the spring semester, open wrestling tournaments wrapped up and Haddad was a free man — free from his time-consuming commitments to the wrestling team and free to do what he wanted.Without the structure and competition of wrestling, Haddad stagnated.At first, sophomore Thomas Ferguson noticed his teammate hadn’t been coming to their math class.“I knew he was a freshman, he was probably caught up in the things freshmen get caught up in,” Ferguson said. Ferguson texted Haddad, encouraging him to come to class despite math being “his thing.” Haddad didn’t listen and Ferguson reached out again, offering to help Haddad with his homework and studying if he would come to class, but when Haddad didn’t show, Ferguson stopped trying. The result for Haddad was a 0.6 GPA for the semester.“I was in a dark place my freshman year second semester,” Haddad said. “I lost focus. And, when I lost focus, I mean, I lost focus. I hit rock bottom. When that semester was over, I was just sitting there saying, ‘I possibly could’ve just ruined my life.’”Haddad’s cumulative GPA dropped to 1.2, below what he needed to be eligible to wrestle. Haddad wasn’t allowed to compete in what would have been his first semester on the team.Mock wrote Haddad a letter telling him that he still had a great opportunity and to give it some serious thought because “you don’t get do-overs.”“When I sent him home in the summer, I started recruiting another heavyweight,” Mock said. “I just didn’t know.”The turnaroundThat summer, Haddad took three classes. Like wrestling, it was go hard or go home, except literally this time.It was during that time, while searching for inspiration, that his uncle told him, “People love and respect a man who rises from the ashes.”That was all he needed.“I really had to dig deep and find my faith and continue to pray throughout the storm,” Haddad said. “That was a point in my life where I didn’t know which way was up.”Haddad, with the help and support of his family, earned two A’s and an A- to boost his GPA above the minimum for eligibility.Still, it would be a long process.Returning in the fall semester, Ferguson found himself in another math class with Haddad. It was déjà vu for Ferguson, but a redemption opportunity for Haddad.“I was like, ‘I’ll help you out, but if I feel like you’re using me to get the work done and you’re not using me as an aid to help you learn, I’m going to stop helping you right then and there,’” Ferguson said.In addition, Haddad worked with senior associate athletic directors John Blanchard, Beth Miller and Larry Gallo, Jr.All three directors spent time making sure Haddad would be eligible and tracking down Haddad’s teachers to stress that his final grades were submitted in time for him to rejoin the team for its tournament in Reno, Nev., on Dec. 20.With one challenge out of the way, Haddad can move to the next. He is 11-5 this season since rejoining the lineup and is climbing the ranks at No. 21 in the country, according to WrestlingReport.com. “I needed that same strength that I needed to get back up and pick myself back up after I got pinned in 28 seconds, to get up and pick myself back up from the 0.6,” Haddad said.It wasn’t fairy-tale perfect, but perhaps it’s better that way. Haddad emerged victorious from the tribulations like the familiar image he displays when winning a match — arms raised high and a smile that reached higher.“I’m loving where I’m at,” Haddad said. “I love and I enjoy waking up everyday and going to work out and doing the things that I’m supposed to be doing.”Contact the Sports Editor at sports@unc.edu.
In a sport as physical as wrestling, injuries are expected, not unfortunate.But even in a sport where bumps and bruises are as much a part of the game as mat burn and cutting weight, this year’s Tar Heels are unusually unlucky.“Injuries,” UNC coach C.D. Mock said. “I’ve never seen so many.”At the very first meet, Mock lost his starting 125-pounder, Nick Shields, for the season after the sophomore broke his jaw in two places. Three weeks later, 165-pound senior Ben Fiacco joined Shields on the permanent disabled list with a knee injury.A month after that, the injury bug struck again. This time the victim was Nick Stabile, also out for the year with a knee injury after being ranked No. 15 among 149-pound wrestlers in the preseason. And that’s just the starters.“I’m down to 16 healthy guys in the team, and that’s hard because they need workout partners,” Mock said of a roster that began the season with 31 healthy wrestlers.All of the injuries have caused the Tar Heels to struggle. They are 4-7-1 in dual meets and just 2-3 in the ACC.But the depleted UNC lineup still houses some serious talent in the form of 157-pound junior Thomas Scotton, who is currently ranked No. 10 in his weight class, and 197-pound senior Dennis Drury.Though they started the season on a roll, the pair has cooled off as of late. Before his victory against N.C. State, Drury had his first consecutive losses all season, and Scotton lost three straight bouts after winning 22 of his first 24.In order for his stars to turn things around the rest of the way, Mock believes they will have to stop wrestling not to lose.“When guys get ranked real high, they start wrestling to defend the ranking, and it’s the worst possible thing you can do,” he said.As the team looks toward the ACC and (for those who qualify) NCAA individual championship tournaments, redshirt freshman Ziad Haddad hopes to continue his ascent to the top of the heavyweight heap.A national champion in high school, Haddad came to UNC with high expectations but missed the first half of this season due to academic ineligibility. Since then he has gone 8-5 with a pair of close losses to No. 9 Scott Steele of Navy.“When the time came and I was able to get back out on the mat, I was extremely excited,” Haddad said. “I couldn’t wait to get out there and show what I could do.”Like the rest of his teammates, Haddad is eyeing the ACC Tournament, which offers an automatic NCAA Tournament bid to the winner of each weight class, as a shot at redemption.“Everyone has an opportunity to make it to nationals,” he said. “It doesn’t matter who you are or what you did.”
Sophie Grabinski and Sanaz Marand, seniors on the North Carolina women’s tennis team, lost in the doubles championship match Sunday at the Freeman Memorial Tennis Championships in Las Vegas.The duo made a lengthy run, but ultimately fell in the doubles championship to Stanford’s Mallory Burdette and Stacey Tan, 8-6.While Grabinski and Marand lost in the finals, another Tar Heel tandem won the consolation doubles final. In that match, senior Katrina Tsang and sophomore Shinann Featherston knocked off an Oregon team, 8-2.Tsang also lost in the singles final while Featherston won the singles consolation final.UNC will take on Winthrop on Wednesday in its first dual match.Wrestling loses a messy oneNorth Carolina traveled to Blacksburg, Va., on Saturday to wrestle No. 15 Virginia Tech and lost an ugly 25-16 match, dropping to 1-2 in the ACC. “Both teams were really beat up,” UNC coach C.D. Mock said. “They have a bunch of problems, and we have a bunch of injuries.”There were two forfeits in the match, which is almost unheard of in Division I wrestling.Sophomore Thomas Ferguson recorded one of the forfeit victories while senior Dennis Drury and freshman Ziad Haddad both technical-faulted their opponents.Haddad’s victory gave the Tar Heels a 16-13 lead in the match with three bouts left, but the Hokies took all three to win.UNC’s Thomas Scotton, the No. 3 157-pound wrestler in the country, lost a close match to No. 5 Jesse Dong. The two finished tied, but because Dong had recorded nine more seconds of riding time, he was awarded the extra point. “I told my staff before we went up there that I’m not going to be really upset if Thomas loses this match,” Mock said. “You always like to win, but you never go back and look at wins and losses the same. “Thomas is going to go back now and review hours and hours of tape and figure out how to beat this guy.”Contact the Sports Editor at sports@unc.edu.
It started like most matches for Thomas Scotton.A quick shot. An early takedown.The junior 157-pound wrestler was left with the ankle of his fleeing opponent — and that was all he needed to yank Duke’s Chris Piccolella back into the circle to secure two points.It’s partially that combination of speed and clout that have propelled Scotton from a NCAA qualifier last year to No. 3 in the nation. Then Scotton, like he does with most opponents, released his foe and faced him once again on his feet. Another takedown. Business as usual for Scotton.“I’m just at the point where I don’t get too concerned about Thomas anymore,” coach C.D. Mock said. “Thomas is the most consistent wrestler I’ve ever coached.” Scotton’s approach is methodical. His eyes are unwavering, calm but assertive. It’s 4-1 now, until he releases the opposition to set up another takedown. Then it happened again, a third takedown. Scotton wanted to get some back points, awarded when an opponent’s back faces the mat, but couldn’t turn Piccolella over — a problem that consistently hampered him before this season.“I’m definitely not the greatest mat wrestler,” Scotton said. “Coach (Trevor) Chinn has really been a godsend for me. He’s really helped me grow leaps and bounds from last year.”Scotton lets Piccolella up to start the next period and then takes him down again. It’s getting ugly now.Again, Scotton struggles to turn his foe over, but he maintains control until to the end of the period. “Thomas’ first three years here, he couldn’t wrestle on bottom, couldn’t get out of bottom. I worried about him all the time,” Mock said. “We’ve been telling him, ‘You wanna be an All-American in Division I wrestling? You’ve got to be able to do it all. You have to be able to wrestle on the mat, top and bottom.’”Scotton isn’t necessarily the strongest. He may not be the fastest either, although Mock said he is. But each of his moves is executed with intensity. This is obvious at the start of the third period when he escapes and then takes Piccolella down again.After the culmination of his 12-4 victory, it’s clear that Thomas can dominate in all areas of the mat. He is, as Mock said, the “whole package.” “I don’t think he can be held down, and he determines when he wants to get off them; he just lets them go,” Mock said. “People aren’t getting out.” Contact the Sports Editor at sports@unc.edu.
The North Carolina wrestling team settled into the newly renovated Carmichael Auditorium quite nicely Tuesday night, coasting to a 26-12 victory against Duke.“I told them before we came out here that this is our new house and we need to let them guys know this is our new house — and it’s our house,” coach C.D. Mock said.The victory over the rival Blue Devils was especially sweet for senior Jeremy Shaw, who won the final home bout of his career to capture his sixth decision in his last seven tries.“Our seniors did a great job,” Mock said. “Jeremy Shaw has just transformed himself as far as I’m concerned from a year ago. He’s just wrestling exceptionally well.”Both Shaw, who started the season 6-7, and his coach attributed his turnaround to an increase in self-confidence.“From there, it’s just so much easier to get rolling once you’ve got momentum, and that’s been the key,” Shaw said.After falling behind 17-3 after five matches, the Blue Devils took the 174- and 184-pound bouts in dramatic fashion to close the gap to 17-9. Fittingly, it was Dennis Drury who put the match out of reach on Senior Night. The senior earned a first period pinfall at the expense of Duke’s John Barone, clinching the victory.“It was definitely nice to go out top,” Drury, ranked No. 12 in the country, said. “This being the last one, it was definitely nice to go out with a pin.”The victory brings the Tar Heels’ conference record to an even 1-1 after the team opened up league play with a 41-0 home loss to No. 7 Maryland. While the loss was embarrassing at the time, Mock said it made his team better in the long run.“A loss like that is gonna do one of two things. It’s going to either destroy you or motivate you,” he said. “We did make a lot of changes after the Maryland match and it’s very evident to me that the changes we’ve made have been positive changes.”Shaw and Drury were joined in the win column by Daniel Helena and Ziad Haddad. The Tar Heels also earned six points when Duke defaulted at the 165-pound weight class.UNC continues its conference schedule on Saturday against Virginia Tech, a team Mock expects will push his squad to the limit.“We’re gonna have our hands full — but so are they.”Contact the Sports Editor at sports@unc.edu.