Hey everybody, Bubba here. Wrestling season is upon us and I bring exciting news! In an effort to improve our coverage to something more befitting the best wrestling program in the nation, we have suckered
elevated several additional people into full writer status. It’s a bunch of people you’re already familiar with who have been contributing wrestling content to BSD in comments and fan posts for years. We’re all going to introduce ourselves shortly, but first I wanted to give a quick preview of what to expect this week.
We’re kicking the season off with a bang, with at least one article every day this week setting up the season ahead:
Tomorrow (Monday) will be my annual wrestling primer. If you’re unfamiliar with wrestling, or just want a refresher, that is the place to start.
On Tuesday, Jp will be providing a recap of Penn State’s record-setting run last season (as opposed to the record-setting run the season before).
On Wednesday, Jeff will be previewing our roster and schedule for the upcoming season. Nathaniel will also have a recap of the team’s press availability.
On Thursday, SWHA will be previewing the NCAA as a whole.
On Friday, we have a a pair of event previews. First, Cari will have her normal preview of our dual against Oklahoma in the BJC that evening. Second, the BSD Wrestle team will be joining forces to give a preview of the National Duals Invitational this weekend. Penn State isn’t participating, but nearly every other top team is, making it a defacto “Who’s Number Two?”. There’s also over a million dollars on the line. It should be a lot of fun.
Finally on Saturday, Nathaniel will have a recap of the Oklahoma dual to read while watching National Duals and/or waiting for the Michigan State game.
There won’t be daily content every week once the season starts, but we do hope that our expanded roster will allow us to bring you more (and more timely) content.
Now, on to the introductions:
Walter (bubba0077)
I was a mediocre H.S. wrestler in NJ back in the late ’90s. I sadly didn’t start really following Penn State wrestling until the Cael era and joining BSD, after I had graduated (I went to one Rec Hall dual as a student). For the last several years I have been providing live scoring for nearly every PSU match (and sometimes others). I also post an annual primer covering the basics of wrestling for any new fans out there. This year, I will continue with those things, and I also plan to do regular articles looking at the Intermat rankings; one early in December, then weekly in the new year.
In my day job I’m a meteorologist by trade, but a programmer in practice. In addition to wrestling, I also watch way too much NCAA football, as anyone who has read my ‘bupdates’ in the open threads knows, and as many NJ Devils games as I can. Other than sports, I am also deep into hobby board gaming.
Nathaniel Rasmussen (sometimes, nerfstate)
Some wrestling fans will say your opinions on the sport don’t matter if you aren’t a member of the on-mat brotherhood (and increasingly, sisterhood). I suppose I’m a living contradiction to that line of thinking: my love of the sport was incubated by going to duals with my dad at Rec Hall in the late-80s to mid-90s, watching guys like Jeff Prescott, Jimmy Martin, Ken Chertow, and Greg Elinski tussle with those crazy twins Gable had, Kurt Angle, etc. A favorite memory a bit later was Cary Kolat’s Rec Hall debut pinning now Team USA Head Coach Bill Zaddick with a very painful looking throw, and the subsequent roof-raising roar that only a Friday night capacity Rec Hall crowd can deliver. That same night, I proudly remember announcing to my dad that true freshman Kerry McCoy was also going to be a really good wrestler—crystal ball indeed.
I drifted away from the sport in the Sunderland years, when my own collegiate pursuits grabbed my attention—but of course, the arrival of Cael Sanderson brought me back in a big way. I’m excited to team up again with the now expanded BSDWrestle squad this year. I’ll continue to film midweek press availabilities, and home post-match pressers—maybe even lobbing some questions to Cael that he’ll deftly down-block. I’ll chip in on recaps where I can; candidly, I’ve developed a love for trying to describe the action on the mat—with the artistry on display of late, it’s almost like translating a poem. With my remaining free time, I like making my wife and two boys authentic Mexican food on my kamado grill and catching a ton of live and recorded music across many genres.
Cari Greene (very formerly, NotCarlotta)
As many of you know, I’ve been a part of the staff of BSD for almost a decade and a half, coming aboard right after Penn State blog Voltron assembled under the Black Shoe Diaries banner and even finding myself managing editor for a few years. At first, I was focused on recruiting, but that was short-lived; it wasn’t until later in Cael Sanderson’s tenure, though, that I started becoming the die-hard wrestling fan that I am today.
My first in-person dual meet as an adult PSU fan was the one where Zain Retherford beat Logan Stieber as a true freshman, and the electricity in Rec Hall as he rode out the defending national champ the second period was electric and a high I’ve been chasing ever since. I’ve been to three different NCAA tournaments (naturally, PSU won all three), just one Big Ten tourney (in Maryland, in 2024), and now, too many dual meets to count, but that first one still holds its place in my heart and helped make wrestling my favorite sport to watch in person, as mentioned in one of my Friday mailbags a few weeks ago.
And while I love, love, love writing the previews, my favorite wrestling piece I’ve ever written for BSD is likely my random thoughts post after the Ohio State dual meet in the BJC in 2016. What a little bitch Tom Ryan is.
Brian (Succss With Honor Always)
For pretty much my entire life I’ve been a Penn State fan and having grown up in the Lehigh Valley in the 90s, wrestling was just what you did and a part of who you were. I was unfortunate enough to have first hand experience at just how good Northampton, Easton and Bethlehem Central Catholic were at the time, competing against them yearly with the losses to prove it. My aspirations to wrestle in college were short lived after putting on about 50 pounds going into my freshman year, never to be cut again.
I guess it’s part of maturation, but this Penn State program more than anything helped me to appreciate how much of my wrestling knowledge was wrong. It’s not only changed my understanding of wrestling but there’s been quite a few life lessons folded in along the way. What’s so interesting about this program is just how differently they’re approaching what’s historically been done, always looking to innovate and evolve in a sport that’s typically radically opposed to change and insistent upon itself (e.g. Iowa fans still clamoring for the Gable way). This team is fun, this program has so many layers to explore, and this community is just phenomenal. I’m really fortunate to be a part of it.
Jeff (Jeff_in_Carlsbad)
Let me please introduce myself, I’m a man of limited wealth and questionable taste. Been around BSD since before Mike sold out to SBN and seen many bloggers and commenters laid to waste.
Unlike a lot of wrestling fans I’ve never actually wrestled competitively. As a child I was into childish things, like basketball for winter sports and my small school didn’t have enough bodies for both wrestling and basketball teams, but, to be fair, I’d have probably stayed with hoops at that time. Anyway, I got hooked on PSU Wrestling as a Freshman when a couple of new friends took me along to see a dual in Rec Hall, been hooked ever since. So, as a man I put away childish things and pay little to no attention to basketball these days.
While in school I probably spent more time in Rec Hall than any other building on campus. Always in the crowd for basketball games, volleyball matches and wrestling duals and in the gym for pickup basketball or losing many a match in the racquetball courts. I told my parents it was fitting and proper that our College of Engineering Graduation ceremony was in Rec Hall since that’s were I spent most of my time. And, if you want to know the truth of it, the last time I’ve stepped foot in Rec Hall was in December 1986 when Penn State knocked off Dan Gable’s top ranked Hawkeyes. I moved out to La La Land a few months later and though I’ve been back on campus too many times to count I’ve yet to step back in Rec Hall. Part of me wants to keep it that way but when the opportunity arises I’m sure I won’t pass it up.
Anyway, the beauty of the interwebs is that wrestling coverage, viewing and discussion, really took off about the same time Cael made his way to Happy Valley and I’ve been sucked back in. Most of it has been chatting with you all here on the BSD. So I’ll continue chip in where I can and, please, don’t hesitate to call me out if I step out of my depth and post something off the wall.
Looking forward to another great record breaking season ahead.
Jp Pearson
Hi friends!
I grew up wrestling in south-central PA (#7174Lyfe) and was pretty decent in 5th & 6th grade. But as everyone else got better & better, I did not, and I finished my Senior year 0-12. That year may have been my most fun, though, as I had a blast being a member of the team and going on road trips with my friends.
After college in the late 90’s I was busy trying to build a tech career out of my Latin major and decision to abstain from law school, and I only paid occasional attention to Penn State Wrestling, Cary Kolat & Kerry McCoy, from not-so-afar in the DC area. I browsed some old internet chat rooms, only very casually during the first decade of the 2000’s, but dug in a lot more when I discovered Black Shoe Diaries in 2008.
In the 17 years since then, my wrestling fandom has changed, a lot.
When Penn State first hired Cael Sanderson in April 2009, I decided to learn the NCAA Tourney scoring systems and had a total blast covering Penn State’s first Big Ten Championship in thrilling fashion, in 2011.
I went to my first Nationals in OKC in 2014 and was shown what a cool sporting event the Wrestling Nationals were.
In 2015, we rolled the dice & applied for an NCAA press credential for BSD to ‘cover’ the Nationals in St. Louis. The hashtag #GrowWrestling was on the upswing then, and our little blog was granted a credential! I fumbled through my own inexperience and my first-ever question to Cael Sanderson (recorded on my cracked cell phone with a video light shining on him), received some extremely helpful & friendly assistance from podcasters, photographers and beat writers, and wrote about Penn State’s 6th-place finish and Matt “Hulk Hands” Brown’s National Championship.
This timeframe coincided with Wrestling Internet’s heyday.
I’d found the wrestling community to be quite welcoming both online & off, and it was not uncommon for fans of rival teams to collaborate in blog posts or to socialize together on pre-Musk twitter or in the bars at wrestling events. During Olympic and World Championship events, this camaraderie gelled into American wrestling fans coming together to cheer on one team, against the world.
I went to Nationals as a fan in 2018 and sat with my Ohio State friends, then went to Pittsburg in 2019 and Detroit in 2022 with credentials, and noticed that things had begun to change.
My credential no longer allowed me to sit mat-side with the photographers like in 2015: writers were banished to the belfries of both the PPG & Little Caesars arenas, from where it was near impossible to see the action. But filming from the Saturday night tunnels, where I got to see the Penn State coaching staff deliver final preparations to multiple All-Americans and National Champions, remained a real treat.
The bloggy journalism party was certainly over when I went to Nationals in Kansas City in 2024 and learned that my credential was a “virtual” credential that allowed me to Zoom into the coaches’ press conference, but not to physically attend. I spent the rest of that tournament squinting at the faraway action while seated with strangers from North Carolina. The food & drink were great in KC, though, and between sessions I was able to meet up with friends and feel wrestling’s sense of community, which definitely helped allay my relative disappointment in my viewing experience.
Nowadays, Penn State has built an ocean between itself and the next-best tier of competitors, and the old bridges across division are more difficult to traverse. Many of wrestling’s old, safe & fun internet spaces have been enshittified, and finding cross-rival community among a growing pool of anonymous or shouty or grifty accounts has become increasingly more difficult.
Thankfully, mercifully, we still have Black Shoe Diaries!
I’ve tried to expand the BSDWrestle author team the past few years, to attempt to meet these key goals:
- Keep this BSDWrestle Community vibrant and fun
- Assure that wrestling writing remains a fun hobby for authors
It’s really quite amazing that this ecosystem continues to work: volunteers post content in our free time, you all visit & read & comment in such volumes that the tech platform’s owners can continue to sell enough advertising that the site remains free to view & participate on as well.
Here’s hoping adding Bubba & Jeff, to Nat & Brian and to Cari & me, will allow us all to achieve our goals just like the wrestlers do.
Let’s have a fun season, friendos!
