The Lehigh junior, ranked No. 4 at 141, is the subject of an MTV show.
By Gary R. Blockus
Of The Morning Call
Cory Cooperman smiled a playful smile and looked across the starting line at Navy’s Nate Gulosh with that sly look in his eyes as if to say ”Gotcha!”
It certainly wasn’t the typical look many wrestlers give their opponents, especially in something as important as the EIWA Championship finals at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., two Saturdays ago, but Cooperman gave the look, the smile, the expression, the unspoken words nonetheless.
”Nate’s a good friend of mine,” said Cooperman, who won the EIWA title with a 14-1 major decision over his former Blair Academy teammate. ”I even kind of gave him a scouting report on [Penn’s Doug] McGraw before he wrestled him in the semifinals.”
McGraw had upset Cooperman in the 2004 EIWA finals, which taught Cooperman a valuable lesson.
”Nate said what I told him about McGraw was so on that it felt like ” what’s that old show? The Twilight Zone ” it felt like the Twilight Zone out there,” Cooperman said. ”So when we went out there, I was goofing on him on the line.”
You won’t find Cooperman goofing on anyone this week when the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships get underway Thursday through Saturday at the Savvis Center in St. Louis, Mo.
”He’s definitely eager to be there,” said Lehigh head coach Greg Strobel, who left with his seven qualifiers for St. Louis this morning. ”I saw him [Monday] morning and he’s got a glint in his eye. He’s focused. After two tough years of going to the NCAAs, I think he’s on track this time.”
After winning his first EIWA title as a freshman in 2003, Cooperman got sick trying to make weight and had to withdraw from nationals. Last year, he was upset in his very first match at nationals and lost two of his first three bouts there, but wrestled back to win five straight and finish seventh, earning All-American status.
This year, Cooperman enters nationals as the No. 4 seed and focused on his goals.
”This is really one match at a time,” Cooperman, a 22-2 junior, acknowledged. ”I have no room to look forward too much after last year. I don’t remember much from that opening bout. I remember ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and the match being over.”
Cooperman’s season has been hectic, not just on the mats. He and undefeated teammate Troy Letters, the returning national champion at 165 pounds, were subjects of a ”Sports Illustrated On Campus” article on making weight.
More intrusive, however, was when Cooperman agreed to be filmed for the MTV documentary series ”True Life,” which focuses on issues affecting the young people within the MTV demographic draw.
An MTV crew miked and filmed Cooperman for inclusion in a show he understands will be about body image and weight issues among college-aged students. As a 141-pound wrestler, he has struggled with maintaining his weight.
”Sometimes it got to be annoying because I’d be walking into a building and they’d have me walk out, don’t say anything, walk around and walk back in,” Cooperman said. ”I’d have a mike on, a camera following me, I’m walking to class, and all these people would be staring at me.”
The crew was also on hand for the entire EIWA Tournament and did lengthy interviews with Cooperman’s mother. Fans entering Alumni Hall for that tournament were greeted by signs that if they didn’t want to be accidentally caught on camera, they should leave.
”We were cutting weight at the time when we had five matches in eight days [Jan. 7-15],” Cooperman said of the most time-consuming portion of the filming. ”I wasn’t looking to please someone in a certain way. I’d say, ‘I have to go work out,’ and they’d tag along. I didn’t have time to be concerned if they were getting everything they needed. I was concerned about my matches.”
That little admission brought Cooperman back to the present, where he is applying the lessons he has learned from the past two years.
”A guy like me, as the No. 4 seed, I’m going to have to beat three guys to get to the No. 1 seed,” Cooperman reasoned. ”If your goal is to be a national champion, you have to beat all the guys in your way anyway.”
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