SATURDAY, MARCH 19 11:38 a.m.
The eight mats on the arena floor are now down to four, and at the moment three of them feature Cornell wrestlers—Lewnes, Bosak, and Simaz—in simultaneous consolation-round matches. Simaz pins his Stanford opponent, Lewnes earns a 12-5 win, and Bosak dominates in a 12-0 decision. That means each will be competing for third place in afternoon matches. But only Simaz will go on to win his; Lewnes loses to Penn State and Bosak to Iowa, neither of which helps the team point race.
7:00 p.m.
Rob Koll has a little black book filled with the names of alumni and friends of Cornell wrestling. His greatest strength may lie in cultivating those relationships, which translate not only to hundreds of thousands of dollars raised annually for the program, but also to what he believes is an exponential spread of Big Red fandom. At the moment, the black book contains 887 names. Many of those fans are in the stands tonight, watching the five Big Red wrestlers participate in the traditional Parade of All-Americans atop what is now a single mat set up for the final matches on a platform above the arena floor. Stephen Friedman nods toward the scene and admits that, while he hoped his eponymous wrestling center would help the team improve, "this is at the upper end of my expectation range, maybe even higher."
At the Friedman Center, dual meets are held in Niemand Arena—named for Arno Niemand '56, the retired founder of Body Bar Systems and a varsity starter back in the day. Last year he wrote a book, The Dream Team of 1947, about a tiny liberal arts institution in Iowa that managed to win an NCAA wrestling championship. That school was Cornell College. A decade ago, Niemand's hopes for Cornell University seemed nearly as absurd. "I figured if we could finish in the top three in the country," he recalls, "that would be incredible."
Cornell has once again done that. But Penn State has placed three wrestlers in the finals, Cornell only one. An Eastern team has finally won a national wrestling team championship, but it's the school in State College. Still, there is a chance for redemption. Cornell can clinch another second-place finish if Dake wins a second straight NCAA title as a sophomore. His opponent is from Penn State.
8:25 p.m.
With nearly 18,000 sets of eyes on him (including Cornell's only other two-time national champs, Travis Lee '05 and recent National Wrestling Hall of Fame inductee Dave Auble '60), as well as a live ESPN audience, Dake slaps his coaches' hands and walks to the center of the mat. He is the only wrestler in the tournament who has not yet allowed a single point. In this match, Koll marvels, "he's the best I've seen him all year." Although his opponent is credited with one point after a referee's call of an illegal move, Dake utterly dominates.
First period: Dake forces his opponent to the mat for a takedown; two points for Cornell. Second period: Dake comes close to pinning his foe (a "near fall"), earning three more points. The crowd is chanting, "Big Red! Big Red!" Third period: Dake starts in the bottom position, but with a quick move he gains control—a reversal garnering two more points.
Hunter Rawlings stands to his full six-foot-seven height, arms raised in triumph. At the end, Dake receives an additional point for riding time—the time each wrestler controls his opponent on the mat, earning a point for anything over fifty-nine seconds. In this seven-minute match, Dake tallies 6:17 of riding time—all but forty-three seconds of the entire bout. "I've never seen anything like that," says Koll, "certainly not in a national championship."
So while it is a sign of just how far the Cornell program has come that second place carries the whiff of disappointment, the event ends on a high note. "We had a record five All-Americans. We had another national champion. We scored more points [93.5, fourteen behind Penn State] in an NCAA tournament than Cornell has ever scored. We beat Iowa for the first time ever," says Koll. "But probably the most important thing that happened was we had about 1,500 people here to watch Cornell wrestlers."
CAM contributing editor Brad Herzog '90 likes to wrestle, but only with his own demons.
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(Run time: 7:06)