[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.When it came around to the fall of 2004 and the heavyrecruiting period, Zalesky already had many of his weight classesfilled with wrestlers who, while indisputably of high caliber, mightnot ultimately prove out as capably on the NCAA level as someof the Iowa-grown kids.The coach was almost out of scholar-ship money and guaranteed slots.His options were shrinking bythe day.96 / FOUR DAYS TO GLORYIt also is worth acknowledging that Jim Zalesky is in themost impossible coaching situation in the history of impossiblecoaching situations, taking over from a man whose achievementsso tower above both the school and the sport as to put just abouteverything around them into eclipse.Gable s departure as coachin the late 1990s shook the state and the program s most ardentfollowers to their foundations.He had given Iowa something tobe proud of beyond record corn crops and the world s greatestcereal manufacturing plant, and the reward for that was godheadstatus.Some coaches would ve been sharp enough operators tohave passed up the job, banking on the age-old sports adage thatit s always better to be the guy who comes after the guy who fol-lows the legend.But Zalesky and Brands had spent most of 1997,Gable s last year as coach, in an unspoken but widely acknowl-edged competition to be the one tapped by Gable to continue hiswork.There were hints that it would be Zalesky, as Gable turnedto his top assistant several times over the course of the 1996 97season to take over, especially when Gable had to undergo thefirst of his hip surgeries.Brands had Gable s fire but not necessar-ily his finesse; he could exhort with the best of them, but one ofGable s great and underappreciated gifts was his ability to inspireand challenge his wrestlers without having them hate his guts.Brands was as explosive as Zalesky could be aloof, but Zalesky,cool sometimes to the point of appearing devoid of charisma,demonstrated tremendous grace under pressure.Ultimately, thejob was his.Brands reluctantly accepted his consolation prize:Topassistant to Zalesky, and chief recruiter.By the winter of 2005, Zalesky s head-coaching career in-cluded three NCAA and three Big Ten team titles and a wholehost of individual conference and national champion wrestlers,and it was nowhere near enough.The Hawks had not won anational crown in five years, and the suspicion was beginning toThe Ghosts of Gable / 97creep in that Zalesky had done his best work in the first threeseasons of his career, 1998, 1999 and 2000, when he basically wascoaching athletes chosen and recruited by Gable to fit Gable ssystem.On his own, Zalesky, with Brands out front on recruit-ing, getting people fired up to join the Hawkeyes, had signedsome tremendous wrestlers but hadn t been able to put togethera team capable of winning it all and second-place finishes atthe NCAAs, no matter how spectacularly they were achieved norfrom what difficulties forged, no longer were acceptable at Iowa.Gable had set the bar that high.Jim Zalesky needed to start win-ning it all again.All of which makes it such a puzzle that the fall of 2004did not become one of the great talent hauls in University ofIowa wrestling history.Here was this senior class, so loaded withelite Division I potential, and every one of the kids had grownup thinking that someday, maybe, if they hit the weights and ranwind sprints until they puked, if they wrestled so hard and so longthat they (like the great Gable was said so often to have done)might have to drag themselves by their arms across the wrestlingroom at the end of practice if they did all that, then maybe theywould one day find themselves in the yellow-and-black of Iowa.So Zalesky had that going for him, the way he did every yearat recruiting time when it came down to the kids from the homestate.But this year was different.Zalesky was the same competentcoach he had always been, but he no longer had Brands in hiscorner.Brands had finally followed his ambition and secured a jobtrying to turn Virginia Tech s straggling program into a nationalpower.He was pure energy and desire, and he electrified highschool kids with his pitch.After Tom Brands came to people shouses for a visit, half the parents were ready to sign up for sixa.m.workouts.He communicated his passion for the sport withsincerity; he could actually make you understand that it was alife-and-death proposition to him, no matter how ridiculous that98 / FOUR DAYS TO GLORYseems when put down on paper.With his enthusiasm and hisclearly defined direction, he had Jay hooked early on.He hadsuch an admirer in Dan that the day Brands announced he wasleaving for Virginia Tech, Dan remembers thinking to himself, Iowa may not happen.What Dan was beginning to realize (and Jay was to discoveras well) was that his interest in Iowa had had significantly to dowith Brands, whom both boys saw as the next best thing to wres-tling for Gable.When Dan watched the Hawkeyes in action, hewas always struck by the way that Brands did most of the coach-ing, and almost all of the yelling. Zalesky looked more like anorganizer than the coach he kind of stood off to the side, Dansays. It was like he was running the business.Brands is just totallydifferent.I had to think about it, and I thought that Brands wasthe coach who could help me get to the next level, make me bet-ter.If Brands was still at Iowa, I d be at Iowa.Even if there had been no scholarship money to give? If Brands was at Iowa, Dan repeats, I d be there.So Brands was going to make that much difference to theLeCleres and the Borschels of the world, and Zalesky had to finda way to bridge that gap.He had assets, the greatest of which wasthe fact that his school was still the object of the boys wrestlingdreams.The Hawkeye wrestling room was still the place whereGable might at any time wander through, stopping to help a wres-tler with his positioning or tell a freshman about something he dseen on tape that might reveal an area to be strengthened.It was aplace rich enough in its history and strong enough in its currentincarnation to attract the high-profile likes of Falck and Tsirtsisand heavyweight Matt Fields, the former state champion fromNorth Cedar High.It was the ultimate home-field advantage [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]