The nucleus of the team Penn State qualified for this year’s NCAA Championships includes seniors David Erwin, Dan Vallimont and Cyler Sanderson and fifth-year junior Brad Pataky. Erwin, Vallimont and Pataky formed the core of a 2005 recruiting class considered the nation’s fifth best by InterMat. Sanderson was part of Iowa State’s top-ranked ‘05 class, but his stay in Ames, Iowa, ended when Penn State hired his older brother, Cael, as head coach. Cyler abandoned a national-title contender for a team with numerous questions. By Saturday, on-mat questions about Penn State’s veterans, who have exemplary personal reputations, should have definitive answers. “I think this is a great opportunity for them,” Cael Sanderson said. “This is a goal of theirs that they wanted for a long time and this is a chance to go for it. They know it’s just time to go out there and unload your clip, let the bullets fly and give it your best shot.” Only Pataky, who followed a traditional redshirt season with an Olympic one, receives another chance after this weekend. But even one of the tournament’s oldest juniors sounds like a man nearing a conclusion. “We’re real determined,” said Pataky, who will return at 125 next season. “You only have so much time.”
Erwin understands the dilemma facing athletes in non-revenue sports without major professional leagues. His first two shots at qualifying for the NCAA tournament ended in frustration at the Big Ten Championships. A shoulder injury sustained at the beginning of 2008-09 prevented him from launching his junior season. Add it up, and the nation’s third-ranked 160- pounder coming out of high school has a 0-0 NCAA tournament record. “I know for me personally I have a lot of goals to meet this week,” said Erwin, the No. 11 seed at 184. “I’m looking for nothing but to go out there, wrestle and show what I have been looking at the last year and the last five years.” Vallimont and Cyler Sanderson’s situations are different. They partially fulfilled some of their goals in 2008, when Vallimont finished third and Cyler placed seventh at 157. But the duo slogged through the 2009 postseason. In a curious move, Vallimont moved up to 165 midway through his junior season and fell in the NCAA Round of 12. Cyler stayed at 157, but lost in the Round of 12 to Bloomsburg’s Matt Moley, a wrestler he defeated twice in the 2008 tournament. “It was frustrating because I knew I should have been there,” he said. “It was tough, but I look forward to going back and doing a lot better than I have done.”
Cyler finds himself in a strange spot in Omaha. With only six qualifiers and just one top-four seed, Penn State needs few glitches to finish among the top five. The Nittany Lions have posted just one top-five finish since 2000. Cyler’s former team has 10 qualifiers. The Cyclones’ 2005 recruiting classes has led Iowa State to third-, fifth-and second-place finishes in the past three national tournaments. Still, Cyler said Penn State, which also is sending sophomores Frank Molinaro and Cameron Wade to Omaha, can contend this weekend. “I know we are ready,” he said. “Everybody that’s going is excited and ready to compete. We have been real relaxed. I believe we are going to have six All- Americans and I believe we can compete for a national championship as a team if everybody goes in there fighting.”
Penn State finished fifth in the Big Ten Championships, a new position for Cael Sanderson, whose three Iowa State teams won Big 12 titles. To become a major factor in Omaha, Penn State needs career weekends from its six qualifiers. “I think we have guys that can make the national finals if they approach it with the right attitude and go out there and create opportunities,” Cael said. “If you get guys in the finals, you do well in the team race.” The Nittany Lions’ best NCAA tournament showing since the late-1990s came in 2008, when they finished third behind Iowa and Ohio State in St. Louis. But Vallimont, who nearly made the finals, was the only member of the 2005 recruiting class in the tournament. Pataky took an Olympic redshirt season that year, while Erwin went 0-2 in the Big Ten tournament. “I think we had had a great recruiting class coming in,” Erwin said. “I don’t think we have achieved what we initially thought we would. But we have had some success. It has been a good five years.”
Thanks to Guy Cipriano and the "Centre Daily Times" (State College, Pa.) for the article