Wrestling: Successful season may mark turning point in program’s ascent

The team faced adversity in every thinkable form this season, but through every trial the Tigers grew stronger. By season’s end, Princeton (7-14, 1-4 Ivy) beat two nationally ranked opponents in Old Dominion and Harvard and sent three grapplers — Frey, senior captain Daniel Kolodzik and sophomore Adam Krop — to the NCAA tournament, where each recorded a win.

“We’ve had so many changes to the program. This season was about adapting to those changes and transforming a mediocre team into a national contender,” said Krop. “Freshmen next year are going to say, ‘Wow, I’m not just going to the best academic school, but I’m going to a wrestling school.’ ”

After a mediocre start to a season filled with tough expectations and an even tougher schedule, the team points to the Midlands tournament in Evanston, Ill., which took place over Christmas break, as the moment when it began to gain respect, not only from other schools around the nation, but also from its members.

At Midlands, head coach Chris Ayres changed how the team approached its matches. Ayres instituted a light mandatory practice each morning of Midlands and required his athletes to show up with a pound or two still to lose. Krop attributes his stellar third-place finish at 141 pounds at Midlands, including a close loss to this year’s national runner-up by a score of only 3-2, to the simple change in training. He says it made him, and the team as a whole, more alert and ready to wrestle when they hit the mats.

Frey also saw Midlands as a great bonding experience with his teammates and a great opportunity to get to know the team’s newest coach, Sean Gray, an assistant who came this past fall from Boston University.

“He’s literally like a cartoon character, like someone straight out of Looney Tunes,” Frey said of Coach Gray.

After the success at Midlands, where the Tigers placed 19th out of 43 teams with only five wrestlers, Princeton entered the toughest stretch of its season. The Tigers lost to Cornell, Brown and Boston University in back-to-back-to-back matches.

“But beating Harvard was just awesome,” Frey insisted.

Princeton’s best dual-meet performance couldn’t have come at a better time. After losing three matches in a row, the Tigers traveled to Cambridge and upset the Crimson 25-14 on Feb. 4. The highlight of the match was Kolodzik’s 9-1 major decision and upset over eventual All-American Walter Peppelman at 157 pounds.

During one of the Tigers’ few lost matches in their meet with Harvard, freshman Chris Perez tore his ACL. It would be the beginning of a month full of injuries and sickness for the team, producing yet another onslaught of unanticipated challenges to face.

“We had a month during the season when we had almost half our team out. We had four guys out with gastro, two guys tear their ACLs, and a guy out with a high ankle sprain,” said Krop, the other victim of a torn ACL, which he suffered in a match against Lehigh’s Steve Dutton. “At the same time, we had a long-term focus and knew that we just had to get healthy for [the EIWA championships]. We were able to get over it.”

If by “getting over it,” Krop means “wrestle through menacing pain,” he and Perez did just that. Krop earned an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament and won his second match against North Carolina’s Evan Henderson 9-5 even though Henderson was yanking on Krop’s injured leg for the whole match.

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Krop met with doctors Tuesday in the hope that he could get surgery as soon as Thursday so that he can begin the long healing process. The surgeon will cut a piece of Krop’s hamstring to use for his new ACL. With the long recovery time for ACL surgeries, it may make sense for Adam to take a medical redshirt year, meaning he would have to withdraw from Princeton for the 2012-13 school year.

“As far as my thoughts on that,” Krop said, “I really don’t know at this point. I just don’t know; it’s a tough decision.”

Along with the injured, Frey was also missed by his team. Frey struggled to make weight during late January and early February as he slowly revived his passion for wrestling and went through his own personal battles, he said. But Frey’s coaches helped him to get back on the mats for the EIWA championships, also referred to as “Easterns,” which were held in Princeton’s Jadwin Gymnasium for the first time since 1987.

“When I came back, I was ready to roll,” said Frey, who reached the finals of the tournament at 125 pounds, earning his third straight berth to the NCAA tournament.

“Being at the finals at Easterns was definitely a top moment for me this year,” Frey added. “It was just great to be able to wrestle in front of a packed house at Jadwin. I really didn’t notice it until the finals, when they announced my name and the crowd just went crazy.”

Looking toward next year, Frey is more than optimistic. He hopes to win the Ivy League, despite Cornell’s eight straight Ivy League championships.

“I’m a gamer and a dreamer, and on any given day anyone can beat anyone, and that’s what is so great about this sport,” Frey said. “Anyone has a fighter’s chance. If I went up to anybody who knows anything about wrestling and said, ‘We’re going to beat Cornell,’ they’d look at me like I had three heads.”

“We just want to be respected,” Krop said. “No more of this ‘It’s Princeton, give ‘em the sportsmanship award because they’re never going to get anything else.’ ”

Princeton is losing only two seniors, Kolodzik and 174-pounder Andy Lowy, to graduation, so the future looks bright, and it will only get brighter if the 2012-13 Tigers stay healthy.