Hawkeyes no longer a Big Ten power
By Don Doxsie
IOWA CITY ” Mark Perry stomped angrily off the mat with tears rolling off his face indistinguishable from the sweat.
He angrily flung his headgear onto the concrete surface in the northwest corner of Carver-Hawkeye Arena, kicked it about 10 feet, stomped over and kicked it again, then trudged out into the tunnel.
When he got there, he let out a loud shout. It wasn’t anything you could recognize as words, just anguish.
He pretty much summed up the feelings of the few thousand Iowa wrestling fans in the arena Sunday.
Iowa, which once won Big Ten wrestling titles as often as it bought new desk calendars for its employees, didn’t even come close to winning Sunday.
With the tournament being held in their own arena for the first time in 11 years, the Hawkeyes notched their worst team finish in 38 years.
The Hawks finished fourth and for a while during Sunday’s final session they dipped as low as fifth.
“It’s not really a disappointment,” head coach Jim Zalesky said. “Second place, third place, fourth place. If you don’t win it all, it doesn’t really matter.”
But it seemed to matter a great deal to some other people in Carver-Hawkeye.
It certainly mattered to Perry, who was the only Hawkeye with a chance to win an individual title Sunday.
The Hawkeyes have had at least one Big Ten champion every year since 1969. In 1983, they won nine of the 10 weight classes. During a 10-year stretch from 1978 through 1987, they supplied two-thirds of the league’s individual champions. As recently as 2000 and 2001, they had four Big Ten champs.
But on Sunday they were shut out.
Their only shot was Perry, who lost a 6-5 heartbreaker to Michigan’s Ryan Churella at 165 pounds.
Perry, a freshman from Stillwater, Okla., registered a takedown to tie the score late in the match but didn’t realize Churella had more than a minute of riding time, which gave him the point he needed to win.
Even after the awards ceremony ” about 20 minutes later ” Perry couldn’t swallow the fact that he had let one slip away.
Seven reporters followed him into the tunnel, past the locker rooms and up two flights of steps to a wrestling room that has spawned champions in bunches. One entire wall of the room is covered with small yellow plaques commemorating all of Iowa’s Big Ten champs.
Sitting on some rolled-up mats a few yards away, Perry struggled to explain why there won’t be any new plaques going up this year.
“I don’t know “¦ what happened “¦” he said, the words lurching out in small, tortured chunks. “It was mostly my fault “¦ I didn’t “¦ When I took him down at the end, I thought there were 45 seconds left. I don’t know if I was looking at the riding time clock or “¦ I was looking at the wrong clock.
“When it ended, I thought we were going to overtime.”
Perry also struggled to explain why none of his teammates joined him in the finals.
“I think some of the team was a little tired,” he said. “And I don’t know if they were feeling sorry for themselves or what. This is no time to feel sorry for yourself.”
Among those who watched the Iowa performance in dismay was former coach Dan Gable, who worked as a commentator for the television broadcast of the tournament.
In 21 years under Gable, Iowa won this tournament 21 times. Second place wasn’t an option. It wasn’t a possibility he even considered.
Although he hinted that Zalesky might be feeling the pressure of following in his footsteps, he said he didn’t think his successor was accepting failure any more than he did.
“I went into the locker room after the first round, and he was in there by himself, and he did not look good,” Gable said. “On the inside, it was tearing him apart.”
Gable said that he came to view the Big Ten tournament as a qualifier for the NCAA Tournament more than a championship unto itself. He said Zalesky needs to think the same way now.
The Hawks qualified seven wrestlers for the NCAA meet, collecting two third-place finishes, a fourth and three fifths in addition to Perry’s second.
All of them will have a fresh start in St. Louis on March 17-19.
“We’ve got two weeks to go yet,” Zalesky said. “That’s the big one. That’s the one you really have to be ready for.
“We have a chance,” he added, “but we have to wrestle better than we did here.”
Don Doxsie can be contacted at (563) 383-2280 or [email protected].
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