Wrestling: Frey excels on young team

Coach Chris Ayres, sitting in his office on the E-Floor of Jadwin Gymnasium, is struggling to find a one-word description for the wrestling team’s season. He defers to assistant coach Andy Lausier, who cheats by using four.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” Lausier chuckles. “I always like to say that we’re the most consistently inconsistent team in the country.”

That’s not to say the Tigers didn’t experience success this season. Sophomore 125-pounder Garrett Frey made the NCAA Championships for the second year in a row, though he was unable to make it out of the first round. According to Ayres, the team was unlucky not to add a second NCAA participant in junior 149-pounder Dan Kolodzik, who missed out on a wild-card bid.

Kolodzik and Frey also placed in the Southern Scuffle, an improvement over the 2009 tournament during which the Tigers were unable to gain a single place. The team also improved on last season’s EIWA tournament performance by fielding five placewinners, the most under Ayres’ tenure. Despite the individual improvements, however, the team’s dual meet wins dropped off from nine to four.

“Last year, we got a little lucky,” Ayres said. “We didn’t really have any injuries. We had some, but it always worked out where we had our lineup out there. This year, unfortunately, it didn’t work out exactly as we planned, and we did have some injuries that I think limited our dual meet success.”

The Tigers were hurt especially by the loss of freshman 174-pounder Ryan Callahan, who missed the entire month of February. But there were others, too, with minor injuries that kept them out of single meets. With a 21-man squad — 10 less than the average NCAA roster size — and close losses to Drexel, Harvard and Boston University, missing one match can make a difference.

“We wrestled eight true freshman and sophomores this year out of 10 weight classes,” Ayres said. “We were really young. Again. Next year we’re going to have a big junior class. I think our [rising] seniors are ready to really take that next step and be the leaders.”

Wrestling, like baseball, sees athletes get hot and suffer through slumps. Ayres and Lausier like to call it “the Abyss.” For a young squad, getting out of it can be a struggle. But with the individual success that they’ve had this season, the Tigers are excited about things to come. A strong recruiting class that will see next year’s roster grow to 26, as well as another year of experience, should see the Tigers improve on what has been a frustrating year.

“As a staff, we’ve been in ‘the Abyss’ before,” Ayres said of his time at the helm of Princeton’s wrestling program. “We just keep moving up. That’s the goal. It’s been slow, but it’s been exciting every year to see what we can do.”