 Stevens Institute of Technology Duck's Blog
by Head Coach Mike Clayton
(NCAA Division III, Centennial Conference)
Duck Blog 1/02/09 – by Stevens Institute of Technology Head Coach Mike Clayton
Hey, Duck Wrestling Fans! Happy New Year! We just returned from our first out of region holiday training trip. Our team, staff and supporters really worked hard to raise the money to fly the team to Florida for a tournament and three duals. We finished 3 rd out of 11 teams at the Florida Citrus Invitational and went 2-1 in dual competition. Our only dual loss was to a tough #10 ranked team.
This was a great trip for our guys. We were able to train in the sunny 80 degree weather and really come together as a team. There really is nothing like travelling over a thousand miles, riding in vans, working out and enjoying wrestling family time on the beach and out at restaurants.
We had 2 of 10 win their weight class and 5 others placed in the top 6. We were able to face some tough competition from Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania and teams from NY to VA. This is the kind of competition that will help us really take the next step as we prepare to take our program and our young men to new heights at national competition!
I think it was also important for our guys to not only train and wrestle well but to really enjoy the fun times hanging out in hotel rooms, watching movies and roaming the beach. Sometimes teams work so hard (our team included) that we forget to really remember to have fun. Sometimes it's hard to know what comes first…having fun or winning. Every one of us as coaches has a responsibility to make sure we help the wrestlers maintain a balance in that area. Work hard! Play hard!
We start a big push toward our conference tourney and NCAA's now. We'll be going strong for the next 8 weeks to prep for both tournaments. Wish us luck!
Home matches remaining:
vs. Elizabethtown, Jan 10 th , 1pm
vs. Kings and Del Val, Jan 17 th , 10am, noon, 2pm
vs. Centennial Conference Quad, Jan 24 th , 10am, noon, 2pm
I'd love to hear from you if you have any questions about our program or our training! You can email me at: MClayton@Stevens.edu .
Have a great Duck week!
12/01/08 – by Stevens Institute of Technology Head Coach Mike Clayton
Perspective is really what it's all about…right now we are at a 1-3 dual record. First of all, I'd like to make myself clear and state that I'm not happy about that. All three teams are solid programs and we were very competitive in two of those losses. What is tough for a coach is understanding the difference between being 1-3 and altering our game plan for the season, or being 1-3 and staying the course.
Right now, we are staying the course! I've had over a decade to develop and learn some great training programs and strategies from some of the top wrestling coaches and trainers in the World. I really believe that what we are doing right now is what is best for our program for February and March (when it counts).
We have added some great talent to our room this year and our returning wrestlers are a solid core. We have only two seniors starting for us so the decision to stay the course not only impacts this year, but also future years. Our young wrestlers need to know that: 1. There is a plan 2. What that plan is 3. That the plan works!
We have one week of practice left before the holiday break and wrestle Hunter this Friday. A big part of our success down the road will be what kind of motivation we've instilled in our team to train over the holidays. Can they keep their long term goals in front of them while striving for daily goals that keep them motivated? The answers will present themselves soon!
To coaches and wrestlers out there who are just starting the high school season, keep things in perspective. The pains you feel now as you start your practices are designed to toughen you for the long haul…good luck as you make your way to Atlantic City!
I'd love to hear from you if you have any questions about our program or our training! You can email me at: MClayton@Stevens.edu .
Have a great Duck week!
11/19/08 - by Stevens Institute of Technology Head Coach Mike Clayton
Interesting time in the Duck neighborhood the past few weeks. We've had 4 competitions in 8 days. It's a tough pace to maintain getting down to weight that often.
We're feeling good that our intensity has started to pick up in the room and on the mats. We started a bit slow losing duals to #20 and #14 ranked teams early on. We just hit the ESU Open with a load of Division I schools and really had a good showing. We also had a dual against a Division I school for the first time in Stevens Wrestling history. The guys really went at them pretty hard. We controlled the mat pretty well.
Practices have switched from our pre-season routine of heavy repetition on common techniques to more drilling and situations on areas where we are noticing the team needs improvement. It's nice to have some live matches to evaluate. We are able to get a better idea of how to best utilize our practice time.
It's also nice to have individual training time with guys. We focus on three main areas for individual training:
1. Technique (Match Review)
2. Mental Training (Match Strategy and Attitude)
3. Self-Assessment (Monitor confidence from month
to month through assessment testing)
One big tourney this weekend before the Thanksgiving break. Hope all is well out there!
I'd love to hear from you if you have any questions about our program or our training! You
can email me at: <mailto:MClayton@Stevens.edu>MClayton@Stevens.edu.
Have a great Duck week!
11/6/08 - by Stevens Institute of Technology Head Coach Mike Clayton
Twi-yi-yi-ce as hard..as it was the first time
Ok, maybe there aren't as many "Poison" fans out there that caught the reference to their hit song in the title of this article. But hey, I'm 36 and still banging heads at practice so I guess I'm still kicking!
Yes, we dropped our first dual for the second straight year. It was a tough loss (21-15) with 3+ starters out of the line-up. It was good to know that still, in the infancy of our program, we are closely battling with top 20 teams even with top guys out of the line-up. I think it's a good sign for where we are going.
This week is an intensity check week. Our new Coach Danny Song and I are really putting guys through an intense practice routine that "starts" off with conditioning and strength training prior to technique. We're in pretty good condition but need to be more intense as we start to wear down our opponents.
We're throwing in a nice conditioning sandwich at the beginning and end of practice and training through our match this Sunday (home at Walker Gym at 5pm) vs. Yeshiva. We battle TCNJ at their place on Wed the 12th at 7pm so we will shoot for a little peak for that dual. They are a tough program with a great deal of tradition and it was great to see their coach scouting our match this past week. That wouldn't have happened a few years ago. Our goal = Keeping the Ducks on the Move!
PS: Our fall clinic showed an increase of over 20% from last year's numbers as we hit nearly 65 campers and coaches! Thanks to everyone for your support!
I'd love to hear from you if you have any questions about our program or our training! You can email me at: MClayton@Stevens.edu
Have a great Duck week! 
10/31/08 ‘Twas the Night Before the First Dual…
I won't kid you…I'm not a big fan of the first dual of the season. You really never know if you are truly prepared to step on the mat. Last year we were pleasantly surprised with a strong start against the #7 ranked team. This year we start off with #20. They are solid, strong and deep at each weight and fresh off a great season last year.
We had some great realizations in our room this week. I think the guys (and yes, even Coach Clayton) realized that we weren't training with our goals in front of us. It's good to realize it early in the season while we can still do something about it. We've been working hard and perhaps not adding much “fun” into the practices. We made a few changes and I think we have a better attitude now at the end of the week.
Our line-up is coming along. It's nice to have some very strong competition in the room this year but, as can be the case, it results in some bumps, bruises, sprains and breaks. It's nice that we have some good back-up guys this year eager and ready to dive in to competition. All part of the building process we are going through.
Hope you can make it to Premier Club (Saturday, Nov 1 st at 2pm) for the match!
I'd love to hear from you if you have any questions about our program or our training! You can email me at: MClayton@Stevens.edu .
Have a great Duck week!
10/27/08 Preps for first dual and wrestle-off summary!
Hello All,
I'm writing to you from LA. Out here this weekend to do a clinic for my training log. It's nice to have some time to reflect on what has been a great week of training.
We held the first ever Stevens wrestle-offs with matches at nearly all weight classes. It is really exciting to see where the program has come in the last year. We've climbed from 17 wrestlers last season to 27 on this year's roster. Our goal is 35 on the team. This summer, our athletic director is helping us expand the room to over 2 full size mats with 11'x84' on the side for bleachers, weights, cardio equipment and more! We are even getting our own designated locker-room this summer. We're really on the move!
The intra-squad was also a highlight as we held the match on our new wrestling mat. We have
photos of the mat on our website at http://www.StevensDucks.com if you'd like to see it!
We had some freshmen really stand out in the intra-squad. We could see 3 freshmen on the starting squad this season. Recruiting for next year has also really started off strong. At Stevens, we encourage qualified students to apply for early decision (Nov 15th for ED1 or Jan 15th for ED2). SAT requirements have really gone up, even in just the last year. We've always been a top academic school but it's getting more and more competitive as we continue to place graduates at the top of the pay scales. Our
Stevens' average starting wage for graduates is several thousands of dollars above the national
average. I'm happy to mention that our wrestling team's starting salary was nearly $2,000 higher than the Stevens' average.
This Saturday (Nov 1st) we will have our first match of the season against a tough team from Rhode Island. It's always a bit nerve-racking to start the season off with a tough opponent. It's important that our wrestlers constantly remember that the season is a process. We will make mistakes but if we learn and continually strive for greatness, we'll be as prepared as we can be by the time the NCAA's roll around.
I'd love to hear from you if you have any questions about our program or our training! You
can email me at: MClayton@Stevens.edu.
Have a great Duck week!
10/19/08 - on the move!
I wanted to share our "Drill Set" with the Duck fans out there. This is a daily routine of technique that we perform either at the beginning of practice as a warm up or during workouts for conditioning training. Either way, it's a great way to reinforce solid technique through muscle memory.
Here is our set:
Duck Drill Set (20 min)
Neutral
Doubles - Lock high on his legs &
Turk finish
1. Double Posts
2. Double Chops
3. Post Drag
4. WRESTLING
Post-Post
Singles
Hand-fight High Single
Hop in-front, Backhand or Lift and Trip
Hi-Crotch to Single Finish
Hi-Crotch to Cut Back and Double Finish
Snap Series - 5X Jam and Snap Rule (Snap from down-block, shots and fakes)
1. Snap & Finish w/ a Backhand
2. Snap to Double
3. Snap to Cross Ankle Pick
4. Snap Sag (Headlock)
5. Snap Butcher
6. Snap Gator-Roll
Counters
1. High Single - Smash & Distance
2. High Crotch - Smash & Distance
3. High Crotch - Navy Counter (Adjust, Lift & Switch)
Drills - 1 a. Shot Re-Shot 1 b. Shot, Shot, Re-Shot
2 a. Shot Counter-Shot 2 b. Shot, Shot, Counter-Shot
Punch By / Shuck By
Pass By
Slap It and Snap It (Down-block drill)
Bottom - BASE, WRIST CONTROL, DISTANCE
1. Stand Ups
a. Inside Leg
b. Outside Leg (pivot)
Focus:
Explosion (whistle), Cross-Wrist, Back Pressure, Distance
(Include Mat Return Drill for Top Man)
2. Base & Up Drill
3. Claw Whips
4. Counter Crab (sag distance, step over, on and hip out)
5. Counter Legs
a. Ref's
Catch leg and throw it over (knee slide away)
b. Leg in-in
ref's to a mule kick (knee slide & stand-up)
b. Leg in
flat, crawl forward, base, standup
Top 1. Block and Motion Break Down
a. Wrist Tilt (One, Two) and Back to His Stomach
b. Bar Arm to the Special
c. Legs (Opponent tries to roll through and we step over)
2. Cross Wrist Tilts
a. Chop & Drive
b. His Grab
My Technique Improves Every Day in Every Way!
We will be demonstrating this drill set workout at our 2nd Annual Fall Clinic at Stevens on November 2nd. We welcome coaches, parents and wrestlers to attend. More info is online at www.StevensDucks.com.
Have a great Duck week!
10/10/08 What's in a Name?
I remember a poem my mom gave me when I went off to college and it basically said that we are given our name by our family. That name has been passed to each of us with the honor bestowed upon it by our parents, grandparents and so on for hundreds of years. It becomes each young man's mission to continue to honor that name by preserving the integrity of what it stands for.
The wrestling clinic we did in New Mexico this past weekend truly honored a man who carried on the legacy of respect and dignity of family name, Doug Zembiec. You can Google search his name and spend countless hours learning of what made this man, my friend, a true American hero. I encourage you do to that.
His high school honored him by naming their wrestling room after him. No honor could be more fitting. Why, because in that room, each day, young men of character train, sacrifice and earn respect for the name that now adorns their wrestling room. Each of them fights to find a place of their own on the walls of history inside that room of honor.
We've worked very hard on doing the same thing in our room at Stevens. We are making it a place where young men come to not only wrestle but to do something far more important, to become men of character. Men who will honor their family name. Will mistakes be made? Sure they will. I've made my share. But true honor comes from learning from mistakes and gaining back the confidence of those you spend time with and those that you look up to you.
We're down to 22 days until the Ducks take the mat against Roger Williams at Premier Club in Saddle Brook NJ (Nov 1 st ). We also host our fall clinic here at Stevens on Sunday, November 2 nd . Info is online at www.StevensDucks.com . We're proud of our name and would love to learn more about the names of wrestling in the great state of NJ!
(Attached photos include the group photo from the Doug Zembiec Memorial Wrestling Clinic in New Mexico and a staff shot of several US Naval Academy Grads from the Class of 1995, Doug's father (Don) and far right is 2008 Olympic Bronze Medalist Adam Wheeler who helped with the clinic as well.)
Have a great Duck week! 10/02/08
A Week of Mixed Emotions What a great time of year! We're really into our practices here at Stevens and it's awesome to get
back into the room with the guys.
We started a concept of drilling last year with the team. We've developed a "living" technique
constitution of sorts. I first wrote down all the techniques that I felt were essential to our sport at the most basic level. (The team I took over last year had gone 4-13 the previous season so I really didn't know what type of technique base the team had.)
To top the list we started with setups to double leg takedowns, perfected solid finishes to double
legs and then added other setups to get us to double legs. We focused on high singles and solid finishes and then forced each guy that liked high crotches to train to be able to finish to a high single. Top focused on cross-wrist series and bottom on a solid stand-up. Basic. Simple. Effective!
This "Drill Set" started out taking us 3 hours to complete. The goal was to get it down to 20 minutes. We accomplished that within 2 weeks. At our 1st Ever Fall Clinic we did the drill set for all campers to see and pounded it out in just 16 minutes. It was really a thing of beauty. We'd developed a solid constitution of solid wrestling technique. The "living" portion of this drill set allows the members of our team, our staff and even outside influences to make changes to the techniques listed if we feel we can do it better or more efficiently.
With a new crop of freshmen in this year the drill sets are developing faster as the returning wrestlers help bring the new guys along. It's worked much better than I'd hoped, but then again.it's a system. We've all heard about the Granby System. Why is it so affective? Because it's a system. Why does Blair do so well at developing some of the top wrestlers in the nation? There is a tremendous system and when you watch a Blair wrestler drill you know that he's repeated those techniques thousands of times.
On another note, I'm taking off Friday (Oct 3rd) to do a wrestling clinic in NM in memory of my college teammates who was killed in Iraq a year ago this past May. Several of my teammates are meeting me in NM at La Cueva High School (Doug Zembiec's old high school) and we're doing the clinic to ensure that the young men growing up in that area have the opportunity to understand how great a man and American Doug was. I'm not sure what kind of weekend it will be in NM, but I hope it helps all of us who knew him help heal from the loss and help others gain from Doug's example.
| (Doug was an All-American wrestler at Navy in 1995 at 177 pounds and served in the US Marine Corps.) |
 |
Have a great Duck week!
9/26/08 Sometimes you have to take a shot of your own medicine..
I continually harp on our guys about making no excuses. If you miss a practice without contacting a coach ahead of time, you run. If you don't make the grade, you sit. If you don't win the match, you evaluate your performance and train smarter.
At a school, like Stevens, where some students are taking as many as 23 credit hours in very rigorous academic classes, it can be easy to allow excuses into your decision making. But I've been able to stand firm (yet sometimes flexible).until this week.
Having started my masters program in management through Stevens this fall, I've honestly been
feeling a bit sorry for myself. I'm signed up for two classes and have only been focusing on one
class while letting the other class fall behind. I've honestly come up with every excuse in the
book why I should just drop the other class and focus on only one class for now. Here are some of
the "weak" excuses I've been throwing around:
I'm just getting back into the whole "college" thing after 13 years.I need more time
I feel like I'm not able to focus enough on the team or my job
I still want to have a personal life
My dog will hate me because instead of playing with her I'll be studying
After talking with a new friend of mine I was explaining the whole situation (including my excuses). The response was not exactly what I'd hoped for (I was hoping for agreement). The response, instead, was an odd look and an "Oh, really.? That's too bad. Basically.I think you should suck it up and start studying for the other class too."
It was a painful taste of my own medicine but my friend was dead on. It's often much easier to coach and motivate others than it is to actually motivate yourself. I find a tremendous source of motivation in the lives of the young men in our program, in the Stevens staff members I work with and in the people I choose to spend precious time with (including my dog Lakota).
I took a step back and looked at my situation and realized that I do have the time to do all these
things. I'm re-affirming my priorities and planning my time better. Our season starts on Monday the 29th and I really feel that this self-realization is going to help me have a better impact on the team come Monday.
Have a great Duck week!
09/18/08
I'm excited about the opportunity to share some of my thoughts on our Stevens 2008-09 Wrestling Season! We're just finishing our "Hell Week" training period. Next week the team will enjoy a week of recovery and a chance to again focus on staying ahead of the academic load. |
