Some of America’s best wrestlers battled their way into the Olympic Team Trial in the Last Chance Qualifier, last weekend. The participant list for the quadrennial team trials is now locked up.
Twelve men and twelve women qualified for the US Olympic Team Trials, to be held in Iowa City, Iowa on April 9th-10th. Nearly 200 wrestlers participated in the Last Chance tournament, held in Cedar Falls, Iowa, a scant one and a half-hour drive away from where the Olympic Team Trials will take place.
Twelve spots in the trials were won by the women finishing 1st and 2nd in the six weight classes. One spot was earned by the champion in each of the six Olympic weights for Men’s Freestyle and Greco-Roman. Only men compete in Greco-Roman at the Olympics.
The athletes who punched their tickets to the trials are as follows.
Men’s Freestyle
57 kg/125.5 pounds- Obe Blanc
65 kg/143 pounds- B.J. Futrell
74 kg/163 pounds- Mark Hall
86 kg/189 pounds- Deron Winn
97 kg/213 pounds – Kallen Kleinschmidt
125 kg/275 pounds – Blaize Cabell
Greco-Roman
59 kg/130 pounds- Justin LaValle
66 kg/145.5 pounds – Marco Lara
75 kg/165 pounds- Alec Ortiz
85 kg/187 pounds- Hayden Zillmer
98 kg/215 pounds – John Lorenz
130 kg/286 pounds – Donny Longendyke
Women’s Freestyle
48 kg/105.5 lbs. – Alesha Zappitella
48 kg/105.5 lbs. – Brittney Taylor
53 kg/116.5 lbs. – Dajan Treder
53 kg/116.5 lbs. – Christina Powell
58 kg/128 lbs.- Trinity Griffin
58 kg/128 lbs.- Lauren Louive
63 kg/138.75 lbs. – Rachael Shannon
63 kg/138.75 lbs. – Axa Molina
69 kg/152 lbs. – Lorrie Ramos
69 kg/152 lbs. – Hanna Gladden
75 kg/165 lbs. – Tanya Kusse
75 kg/1565 lbs. – Mary Westman
A clutch of competitors had just wrestled at Madison Square Garden less than a month ago in the NCAA Championship. Collegiate wrestling is different than both Olympic rule sets, known colloquially as “folkstyle.” Thus, elite American wrestlers are almost always proficient in multiple wrestling rule sets.
Hayden “Planetarium” Zillmer, a senior at North Dakota State, was able to bounce back from a disappointing finish at the NCAAs, which saw him eliminated two wins shy of All-American status. Zillmer won the 85 kilogram category in the Greco-Roman tournament.
“John” Blaize Campbell, a senior at Northern Iowa, qualified for the NCAA tournament but was unfortunately not cleared to wrestle due to illness. However, Blaize recovered in time to throw down in his home gym, emerging victorious in the 125 kilogram men’s freestyle division.
The tournament also helped reestablish two lightweights who had not been competing regularly for several years. Champions BJ “Back to the” Futrell, at 65 kilos, and Obe “Wan” Blanc, at 57 kilos, both have experience overseas and won medals amidst top notch international competition. Additionally, Blanc was the USA’s team representative at 55 kilos in the 2010 World Championship.
The highlight of the tournament was a showcase of the future of USA wrestling at 74 kilograms, when 2014 Junior World Team member Anthony Valencia “Oranges?” [sorry, hitting a wall here] faced off against 2015 Junior World Team member Mark “Kids in the” Hall in the finals. Hall, a Penn State signee, got the better of Valencia, who has just completed his redshirt freshman year at Arizona State. This was not before Valencia did his best Frogger impression with an acrobatic, improvised leap frog take down to go up by a point with less than a minute left in the match. Hall would not be denied, however, and by dint of will, secured the winning takedown with mere seconds left in the match.
Perhaps more impressive is the fact that Hall was nearly beaten by technical fall in the quarterfinals by former Lehigh Mountainhawk, Santiago Martinez, rallying from a 8-0 deficit to win and advance. Coming in third (and falling to Valencia in the quarters) was 4X Pennsylvania state champ Chance “30 Seconds to” Marsteller, who put together his own highlight reel on his march to a bronze medal. Though he did not qualify for the Trials, Chance is another bright spot in Team USA’s deep and young 74 kg weight class.
The stakes are immeasurably heightened this Saturday and Sunday as America’s best will enter Carver-Hawkeye Arena with Olympic dreams on the line. One speed bump on the road to glory for some of the athletes is the fact that the USA is only qualified to participate in 9 out of a possible 16 weight classes in Rio at the moment. The Team Trials winner in those other 7 weight classes will need to qualify the weight in 2 more tournaments happening overseas in the next month. But that person will have to run the domestic gauntlet first.
The rubber hits the Resilite in Iowa City. Full trials coverage details can be found here, and more info on the Last Chance Qualifier is here.