Knights Blog: Scott Goodale

12/12/08 FINAL EXAM, COMPETITION, and RECRUITING

Anyone who has ever wrestled or coached at the colligate level knows just how tough this time of year can be. Forget the holidays, family gatherings, and travel, it is the final exams mixed in with competition that makes it tough. Starting this past week, we started altering our practices to allow our wrestlers to really “attack” their academics. These are very important exams and as a program we take great pride in making sure our wrestlers do well in the classroom. It is probably the biggest difference between high school and college. The next two weeks, we can meet one-on-one with a student athlete in the morning, get a great workout, and allow them to set up their study with tutors, groups, and professors during normal practice times. As a staff we need to be very flexible and willing to work with the student athletes because, after all, they are at Rutgers University to get an education. At the same time, we will ask our student athletes to meet us halfway. Don't pull all-nighters, get a mandatory 8-hours of sleep, control your weight, and get your workouts in. It is sometimes (for me always) a good thing to clear your mind with a training session before getting back to hitting the books. In the next 3 weeks we will travel to Lock Haven (and wrestle 3 duals), host Lehigh on December 20 th , and, for some of our wrestlers, compete at the Midlands/Wilkes open. I believe that we have done a good job talking about time management and preparing for exams and competition. We want our guys competing hard in the classroom, like they do on the mat.

This is also a very busy time for the staff. There just so happens to be some great high school tournaments taking place over the holidays. I will ask our coaches to make a big commitment over the next month, which will be filled with a lot of travel, lots of extra workouts with individuals, paper work, etc. Everything possible to be the best. They will sacrifice a lot of family time (Edgar and I are the only married ones, so we will make it work), but that is part of the job.

On the recruiting front, we have developed a bunch of recruiting rivalries with some schools where we happen to be going after the same kid. We have won some and certainly lost some. I have found it very interesting that there are coaches who will throw the line, “when is the last time Rutgers has had an All-American?” This is a good point, it has been a while, but heck, we have only been here for ONE season. The guys we have attracted have actually taken that as a challenge; they want to be the next All-American for this university. So I thank the ones who have tried to use that. Listen, the guys who wrestle at this level all want to be All-Americans and national champs. Ultimately, it comes down to them and how hard they are willing to work. I sure like to think so. I also know that every other person in the program/coach feels the same way. I just find it better to highlight what is good about our university than to try and tell a recruit about someone else's. The truth is that I don't know what goes on at other programs, so who am I to try and speculate?

Until next time,
Scott Goodale

P.S.: Reserve your seats now for our January 24 th home match against Rider at the RAC. Reserved seating is going fast, so go online and order your tickets. Our goal is to “Pack the RAC.” Help us send a message to the administration and to the rest of the country as to just how important this sport is to this state. Visit www.scarletknights.com to see the schedule for Saturday, January 24 th .

10/27/08 Competition approaching

Well it is that time of year again.  The leaves really starting to turn creating that fall foilage, the weather is starting to change, and wrestlers are starting to look like wrestlers.  For me it has
always  been the best time of year.  The season is fast approaching and live competition against someone other than yourselves. With that comes wrestle-offs, which to be completely honest with you I am not a huge fan of. Necessary, absolutely.   Obviously I understand why they are done, and I do believe that our guys need to wrestle a match and create the type of atmosphere that brings anxiety, nervousness, and maybe some fear.  For our program it will be a chance for some of our young guys to compete for the first time at this level.  The first time they will wrestle a 3 minute first period, and the first time riding time will be a factor in the their matches. This is very hard to simulate in practice because you just dont get those nerves in practice.  You can do all the training in the world and freshmen will still be effected by the "nerves" from the first time out.  It also allows us to see how all the wrestlers handle their weights, in getting down for the first time.  What adjustments we need to make with their diets, hydration, and pre-match meals. For all those reasons, I think wrestle-offs are important.  For me they are not the end all.  I use to get a lot questions when I was at Jackson on why I didnt do them early in the year.  I just felt like when a kid lost his challenge match there was no need for them to train, they werent the starter. Why should they prepare everyday and go through hell?  I have seen some good HS programs do this and lose some really good wrestlers in December becasue of it.  It was always  our philosophy, and I believe we are doing it this year as well, that you need 2 quality kids at every weight, and your schedule should provide oppurtunities that both are getting plenty of matches.  This keeps everyone training at a high
level, and always ready to perform.  This is obviously done a lot easier at the college level, with open tournaments, and quads or tri-meets on every weekend.  So the meet this Friday coming up, which has drawn plenty of attention from the  NJ wrestling community, will be a great chance to watch and then meet (after the match Please) the Scarlet Knights.  In that respect it is great for the fans of the sport.  Hopefully there will be some great match-ups and more importantly the guys wrestle hard for 7 minutes (maybe more).  We have stressed the importance of being exciting to watch, not leaving anything on the mat,  being relentless in your efforts to score points., and most importantly winning.  Now these guys have been wrestling each other for a while so you can bet there will be more conservative wrestling (happens in every wrestle -off match I have seen) than we would like. Hopefully it is a great night and it will give you a sense of what we are trying to do here at RU!!

The schedule for wrestle-offs:
Tuesday   First round of mini-tournament
Wedneday   Losers of Tuesday wrestle
Friday  Finalists of Mini-tournament

Thanks for reading and talk with you soon!!

09/28/09 Pre-Season Comes to End

Today is our last day of pre-season and we will finish it with an hour and a half of EDGAR Training.  Frankie is bringing in his conditioning coach to put us through a workout so I am excited to see how it goes. Pre-season has been fun, intense, and absolutely worth it.  Got these young guys their feet wet, built a base from a conditioning standpoint, and found some quality leadership with in the room. Just like the rest of the country, we are still on the road recruiting, bringing in kids on official visits, and doing plenty of paperwork to keep pace. 

I thought there was a lot of paperwork in HS, holy heck.I think recruiting is going well but every time we get a real good kid some other University in the EIWA gets one.  What a conference, and I respect the heck out of the work the coaches is this conference do. Speaking of the EIWA, I am very anxious to see how the new qualifying system plays out.  I like the fact that November matches mean a lot, and are important.  For us it is going to be a matter of making the most of our opportunities when we have a shot to knock off a ranked kid. I think you will see parity in College wrestling and you will see some of the less powerful schools getting better.  Basically you can go to any university now, and as long as the schedule is tough (open tournaments etc) you have opportunity to qualify.  I guess there are pros and cons and let's see how it plays out.

Until next time!!!!
Scott Goodale

09/12/08 Tough Night on the Banks

Just got back to the office at 11:00 Pm from the football game. Wow, that was not good.  I left at 38-12.  We had 3 recruits and their families up, so although we enjoyed the tailgate that was about all we enjoyed. Coach Poff (my college coach) came in for the game so it was great spending time with him. He got a chance to talk wrestling with a lot of great jersey wrestling people. Anyway Coach Schiano is the man here so I know he will rally those guys.

Our conditioning portion of pre-season is off and running and we were pleasantly surprised to see most of guys report back to school in really good shape. You can tell that most of the guys bought in to what we were preaching in regards to making this a lifestyle. Something that needs to be done year round. Committing yourself to our vision year round. It doesn't mean you necessarily have to wrestle every day, but something has to be done every day to reach a
certain level. Whether its lifting, running, surfing (you can do that in NJ), watching tape etc.  We still have a ways to go but I honestly believe we are better off today than we were in
January.  Obviously it has to do with kids buying in and having better leadership on your team, and we are certainly better in that arearight now.  It also didn't hurt bringing in 14 guys who wrestle year round, and were somewhat prepared from a conditioning standpoint.

The staff had a chance to observe some really good scraps and are excited about the way these guys push and compete.  Guys are starting to think hydration testing and are doing a good job managing their weight. Pretty much where we anticipated our guys wrestling, for the most part everyone will be at that weight.  Pletcher will probably be down at 65 and Whalen at 74.  Well it's off to bed, we have an early one tomorrow!!

PS to clear up some miscommunication from my last blog (I didn't realize so many people read these things.  I got a hundred emails on who was going to redshirt and ideas on what I should do, it was actually cool) I didn't say these guys weren't going to redshirt at
all.  I just feel some guys are ready to go right now then they should go.  For example you can believe Winston, Melde, Rinaldi, Langel etc  are going to redshirt somewhere down the line.  Does it always have to be there true freshmen year?  Please don't read into too much we are undecided about most of those guys.  Time will tell.

Scott Goodale

09/08/08 Back to the Banks
Today was the day that the freshmen can report and campus is buzzing right now. As you can imagine I am all fired up (which doesn't take a whole heck of a lot). Everyone is excited to get back and the staff just met up with all the wrestlers to make sure they were settled in. Our pre-season will start here shortly and right now a lot of the guys are working out on their own. You can almost feel the anticipation and sometimes tension when everyone is in the wrestling room. Some guys stay on opposite sides of the room, others jump right in the fire. It is fun to watch and I can't wait until we get into actual training as a team.

We just hired Brandon Becker (3x All-American from Indiana) and he has been up to campus and in the area looking for a place to live. He is going to be a huge help for us, and I believe guys like Pletcher, Whalen, Winston, Rinaldi, Dobish and the rest of those good middleweights will benefit from him. Actually I believe everyone is going to benefit. I don't believe in having lightweight, middleweight, and hwt coaches. I mean obviously if you are doing individual workouts it helps when you are close in weight, but if you can coach, and reach a kid, I don't care how you do it. Some of our Lightweights best sessions were early morning workouts with Coach Leonardis. If you are an upper weight and can keep pace with Edgar "God bless you". My point is we brought Becker in to help the whole program and I just have a feeling that everyone can learn from a 3x AA.

As far as what weights our guys will go and red-shirting goes, none of that will be decided until late October. As of now Lamar Brown is the only one that will definitely be red-shirting. I have some pretty strong feeling about the whole red-shirt theory and I won't get into right now, but for those who know me, know I am not afraid to go young. Taking a year off sometimes can be good, other times bad. I really believe you maintain unbelievable focus when you are training and have certain goals to look forward to achieving when you are competing. The underclass guys will have to be decisively better than the upperclassmen, but if they are then my thought is they should wrestle. Is it the right theory? Not sure, only time will tell. I think it has been our philosophy to make sure we are recruiting kids who can compete right away and score points at the National tournament.

Well I will be back in a week or so. At that time all the meetings with advisors, trainers, admissions etc will be over and I will have some good wrestling stories to report on. For now we look forward to our first football game against Fresno State and tailgate (I am A huge college Football fan so I am excited about Fresno State coming in). If your in the area come over and join us. If not, enjoy your labor day.

Scott Goodale
Rutgers University Head Coach