Kellen Russell's Rookie Diary: Entry #1
12/7/2007 12:00:00 AM | Wrestling
As freshman 141-pounder Kellen Russell and the Wolverines prepare for their home opener against Kent State -- their final dual meet before the holiday break -- the U-M rookie reflects on his decision to come to Michigan, the transition to collegiate wrestling and his recent emergence on the national wrestling scene.
I didn't know a lot about Michigan before the recruiting process started. I knew they had a good football team. I knew they had a number of good wrestlers, but I didn't really know any of them in particular. When I was younger, I knew of the St. Edward guys, like Mike [Kulczycki] and Andy [Hrovat], because I used to go to all the matches at Blair Academy when I was younger. So I knew they had a good wrestling team, and I knew this was a good place to get an education.
During the recruiting process, I was looking all over the place -- at Big Ten, Big 12, EIWA and ACC schools. I didn't actually start talking to Michigan until two weeks or so before the signing date. I came out here for my official trip the weekend before the signing date. I wasn't even sure I even wanted to come out here, because I was pretty set on going to Lehigh. But when I came out, I just loved it. It's a big campus with a lot of people, but you don't get lost in it. After going to a school with only 400 kids, it's kind of cool to sit in a lecture that has 400 kids in it. So it's a big difference, but I really liked it. The kids on the team were all nice. We hung out at their houses, and they joked around with us and treated us like we were already their teammates. They didn't try to impress us, they just acted the way they normally would.
I think wrestling at Blair prepared me well for college. I was facing the best kids in the country every weekend. It's obviously different than wrestling the best kids in college, but I'd say that I had a better starting point than most kids. It was less of a jump. In practice, I was used to wrestling top-notch kids. We trained hard every day, and it's the same thing here. Training is different than how it was in high school. We did hard drilling at Blair, which I really like, but we still did a lot of technique. After wrestling for so many years, I don't think you need to work on technique quite as much. You need to do a lot more live drilling, which we do a lot of here.
Jeff Buxton and Joe McFarland are fairly similar. They both like to work and train really hard. They're similar in their intensity level. So I kind of knew what to expect, and that made the transition a lot easier for me. Joe and I will pick each other's brain. He'll show me certain things, and I'll show him how I'm used to doing it. So I'll pick and choose certain things. Some things I've changed, and some things I've kept. He doesn't mind that I'll stick with some old stuff that works. If it works for me, he's fine with it.
I'm also learning a lot from the guys during drilling. I work out with Josh [Churella] a lot, and he's really helped me. He's always willing to answer my questions. I hate wrestling bottom against him. When we're on our feet, my goal is not to get taken down. Once I get taken down, it's just miserable down there. But it's definitely helped me learn how to get out of legs. The first time I wrestled Josh, I went live with him for an hour, and I think I might have scored on him once. He just beat me up for an hour straight. That gave me a good indication of how much stronger everyone is in college. I wrestled a lot of 152-pounders on my high school team before, but he was just in a different league. I think I've caught up a little bit. I still don't score very many points, but he doesn't score as many points on me either. I can scramble with him pretty well, and sometimes I can get a couple good shots off. So I'm getting closer.
I wanted to start right away, but it was up to the coaches. When I first came in, I was pretty small. I trained all summer but for August, and I lost a lot of weight. But when I got here, I started lifting and got bigger. For me, I think it was more of a mental thing. I wanted to be mentally ready. After wrestling with Josh for a couple of weeks, I could feel myself improve, and I definitely felt ready to start.
When I went out this weekend in Las Vegas, I was just hoping to have a couple close matches with good guys, maybe beat a couple of them. I felt that I could win, but I wasn't putting pressure on myself to win. So it surprised me a little bit. I guess I was imagining that college wrestlers, with all that experience, would a lot better than me. It was the same thing as when I first entered high school. I was getting beat up by the older guys in practice every day, but I realized that when you're training with the best guys in the country, nobody is going to be as good as your workout partners.
My main goal for this year was to be offensive when I had to be, but not so offensive that I made a lot of mistakes. In Vegas, I think some guys underestimated me and took dumb shots, and I was able to counter it. That's what I tend to do anyway. So it definitely played into my strength to just stay in good position the whole time. I think in a lot of those matches, just wrestling through it and wrestling the whole time helped a lot. A lot of guys will stop wrestling when they get taken down. I guess I just hate losing so much that when somebody scores on me, I get angry. It kind of fuels the fire and makes me keep going. So that's probably the best thing I learned from last weekend -- never stop wrestling until the whistle blows. I also learned that I'm really am mentally and physically prepared to beat the best guys in the country. After beating some of the guys out there, my expectations have changed. Now I'm definitely looking to place high at NCAAs -- maybe even make it to the finals and win it. If I can wrestle like I did this weekend, I should be able to do it.
It's pretty cool to be a true freshman and ranked as high as I am right now. But it doesn't really change anything. I still think I can wrestle a lot better and be ranked even higher. So I'm just looking forward to wrestling the guys ahead of me and beating them. I don't put any pressure on myself. With everything that has happened with the rankings over the last couple weeks, they obviously change all the time. I think among the top 15 guys at each weight class pretty much any one of them can beat another. So you just have to go out there and wrestle consistently.
As long as you believe you can beat anybody in the country, I think you can beat anybody. When I was in high school, anytime I went out on the mat with negative thoughts, I didn't wrestle very well. But when I knew I was going to win, I wrestled a lot better. The same applies to college. There's no point in wrestling a match if you don't think you're going to win. I don't like when people hang around and try to wrestle just to keep it close. If I step on the mat, I'm going to wrestle to win, not just to say that I lost 1-0 to the best kid in the country. I want to say that I beat him 1-0.
