Open Practice - October 16, 2014

Sports Performance Center - north of Reser

 The Beavers held their second Open Practice of the season on Thursday, Oct 16, at 4:00. This is the first Open Practice on a Thursday that I can remember, but television now dictates when things happen, and Oregon State was playing football that evening.

This was actually the first official Open Practice for this year, as the first Open Practice was an unofficial event before school actually started. 

Entrance to practice facility

If I remember correctly it is a fairly recent NCAA ruling that wrestling cannot officially start practice until October 10.

Considering that it was a Thursday, quite a few fans were in attendance. They filled up the bleachers

Fans waiting for practice

in the room and more people were standing on the sides. Seems that the fans are anxious for competition to begin!

 Since this was still the first week of official practice, the coaches weren't pushing as hard as they could, but the guys seemed to have taken things up a notch since the first Open Practice!

Assembling for practice

I was watching the scrambles between Joey Palmer and Devin Reynolds, Jack Hathaway and Ronnie Rios-Bresser, Joey Delgado and Seth Thomas, and volunteer Assistant Coach Chad Hanke and Amar Dhesi. I wanted to watch more of the pairings, but 

these were the closest and they were so much fun to watch, I kept forgetting the others much of the time. In fact, the battles of Palmer/Reynolds and Hathaway/Rios-Bresser were so engrossing that only the occasional THUMP! of Hanke/Dhesi hitting the mats would draw my attention away!

And it's not just the lower weights that are in contention. I'm really looking forward to the Intrasquad, Nov. 6, (another Thursday!) at 7:00 pm! Usually you

Head Coach Zalesky warming up the team

have a pretty good idea of who will fill each spot in the line-up, but I have no idea who will take many of the weights. It will be very interesting!!

If you haven't already filled out your application form to join "The FALL" Fan Club, just look to the right side of this page under "Links". The fifth one down is the application form. You can download it, fill it out and send it in. In fact, it is a "fillable" form. Download it to your computer, and open it from there. Then you should be able to type in your information and print out the finished form. Information on where to mail it is included on the form.

Deadline for sending in your application is Oct 31. That gives enough time for members of the Board to process everything and get member packets ready on time for the first dual meet of the year, (coming up soon!) - Nov. 13, at 7 pm.

To see a larger version of the photos, just click on any of them. These are just snapshots from my little digital camera to provide some visuals.

Go Beavs!