Bluefield, WV - The Bluefield State Big Blue Men's wrestling team opened competition with three events in the first nine days of the 2024-2025 season, competing at the Pepsi Patriot Open in Kentucky, a dual against Mount Olive University, and the Cougar Open at Averett University. The grapplers have already shown significant improvement over the previous year, winning more individual matches in the first nine days than they did in the entire previous season.
Leading the squad in wins is freshman Ryder Rhodes of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Rhodes has earned nine wins, including a pin in the dual against Mount Olive and placing in both tournaments.
Enrique Sanchez rebounded from a rough opening weekend in Kentucky with a third place finish at the Cougar Open, his second year in a row placing at that event. Moving up from 141 lbs. to 149, Sanchez is 6-3 with 5 pins on the season.
Greg Dennard has returned to the line-up after a redshirt year, moving up to heavyweight. The Engineering major is 5-2 at his new weight with three pins.
Freshman Moses Eads is also contributing to the program's resurgence, starting the season with a 7-3 record, including going 5-1 at the Cougar Open and earning a medal. All of his victories have been bonus point wins.
Maryland native Kairyn Hall has held down the 157 lb. class, earning seven victories in his first 9 days of competition.
The 133 lb weight has been manned by BSU student government president Luke Roberts and Freshman Stephen Exum. Roberts earned a pair of victories at the Cougar Open, while Exum went 5-1 at the Patriot Open, finishing in third place, with four pins and a technical fall.
Coach Gardner's thoughts:
We've shown improvement across the board. We are deeper, more talented, and technically improved over last year. Last year was rough, without very many highlights. I'm excited about our start and the promise we are showing. We've got a ton to improve upon, and a long season ahead of us, but I'm liking what I'm seeing.
Against Mount Olive, a team that might have shut us out last year, we were competitive, and showed fight and grit. Our first competition in 2023 we won only 10 matches. This year, at a tougher event, we doubled that number. At the Cougar Open, our year over year improvement was an increase of 200% in the number of wins. We had the second highest winning percentage at the event with a .660 win rate. We're also pinning people and scoring bonus points at a high rate. We'll continue to get better if we continue to work. We've got a few guys out with injuries, and we'll be getting a few guys back at the semester break when they become eligible. This week will be a real challenge. We front loaded our schedule and are facing two conference powers as well as competing at the King Open this week. The hope is we'll have enough of a body of work to assess that we can really tailor our training to make more improvements as we go along.
