Your future, our focus
NWC Coach Wants to Relive That Feeling
By Steve Moseley
Former Tribune Sports Editor
Special to the Tribune
The 2004 Northwest College national championship wrestling season was a high water mark of Powell's initial century and also of this writer's first 54 years.
Momentum built that season as Coach Jim Zeigler's Trappers held the No. 1 national ranking in Division 1 of the NJCAA from the preseason polls throughout the regular season. This exceptional group of young athletes - a wonderfully diverse mixture of cultures and personalities - was still on top of the ratings going into the national championship tournament at Rochester, Minn.
It was my good fortune to be Powell Tribune sports editor at the time.
There was excitement when news came that I would make the trip to cover Jim and his kids, but it was tempered by nervousness, too. Would this basketball guy, whose small Nebraska high school of the '60s didn't even have wrestling, be up to the task? I sure hoped so, especially when I learned I would travel, eat and stay with the team.
How would Jim and these young Trappers accept a hoops guy - kind of an old one to boot - infiltrating their ranks with so much on the line?
Not to worry. Coach said I was invited to all the weigh-ins, team meetings, pep talks, "motivation moments" and whatever else this remarkable quest would present.
Sports is almost always covered from the outside. Not this time. Here I had the ultimate chance to cover it from within the team's most intimate circle. Weigh-ins. Physical therapy sessions to keep the strong, but exhausted young bodies at their peak. Light moments, practical jokes and some dark clouds of deep disappointment. The Trappers experienced it all, and I was right there.
The upshot is that Northwest set a new all-time record for points in the two-day tournament. Incredibly, they had it in the bag after day one. Tyler Rhodes, Robert Roszkiewicz and Eric Sabot all won national championships. Seth Wright and Patrick Sharp were runners-up and Jacob Wright was third. Kade Caturia was fifth and Pete Julander seventh.
Three champions, eight total medalists - and college wrestling has only 10 weight classes? No one made a peep when Jim was named NJCAA Coach of the Year.
Our tight-knit little group included a set of brothers, a newlywed who was a tiger on the mat but a lovesick puppy on the phone (frequently) with his wife. Tyler, a heavyweight as soft-spoken as he was massive, won his second national championship, then went off to NCAA Division I Oklahoma.
Five years later it still seems like yesterday. One wonders where all those fellas are these days. How has life treated them? Nothing but happiness and prosperity I hope.
Highlights of the trip for me began with simply being allowed in "the room," the name by which, I came to learn, wrestlers everywhere refer to their training area. At home or on the road, "the room" is anywhere wrestlers talk strategy or work out. Mothers didn't get in the room at Rochester. Girlfriends? Forget about it. Much more than being permitted in the room, I was made to feel welcome. Kneeling on the edge of the mat as the Trappers wrestled their guts out was the highest kind of honor. Then there was the trip home. Oh my, the trip home.
Nearing Powell at last, we could see activity along the highway on the Garland curve. Cars parked. People milling about. Finally we drew close enough to see Powell folks lining the highway, holding up index fingers, flashing signs, clapping and screaming like banshees. It was like that all the way to a thundering pep rally at Cabre Gym.
Not one of the champions was from Powell, yet the community wrapped them all in a warm embrace.
It was my profound good luck to be inside the bus. Having been tipped off, I had my camera out and ready to go. Watching the team's reaction to this surprise welcome home was a treat. Seeing Coach Zeigler dabbing tears, I thought, "Do I dare?"
Wrestling coaches can be kind of severe. Have you noticed? Macho, too. Was this picture worth dying for or, at the least, suffering painful soft tissue damage? It sure was.
Jim saw the flash, knew he'd been ambushed and (Whew!) just smiled. That photo, more than any other among the hundreds I brought back, is still the most vivid in my memory to this day.
I have a feeling Coach would say the same.