5 Spartans headed to NCAA Championships in St. Louis

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All season, MSU wrestling head coach Tom Minkel has drawn attention to the youth in his team’s lineup.

This weekend, the best wrestlers in the country will take notice.

Five Spartans have qualified for the NCAA Wrestling Championships, which run Thursday through Saturday in St. Louis. Two of those wrestlers are redshirt freshmen: Eric Olanowski, in the 125-pound weight class, and Ian Hinton (174 pounds). Rounding out the Spartans’ lineup is sophomore Anthony Jones Jr. (157 pounds), junior Franklin Gomez (133 pounds) and senior Rex Kendle (165 pounds).

Gomez, one of the top wrestlers in the country in his class, will return to the finals after earning All-American status with a third place finish at last year’s NCAA Championships.

To be named an All-American, wrestlers must place in the top eight of their respective weight class.

Gomez earned an automatic bid after winning the Big Ten Championships this weekend. Jones and Olanowski both also earned automatic bids.

Kendle and Hinton earned two of the 52 at-large bids in the tournament after going 22-13 and 19-17 for the season, respectively.

Hinton said he and the rest of the team were not surprised to hear Kendle’s name called. But Hinton wasn’t nervous to hear his own name called.

“I wasn’t nervous because I wasn’t expecting it,” Hinton said. “We all kind of figured Rex was going to get it. One of our coaches came out with the sheet and was like, ‘congratulations, Rex,’ and one of the other coaches was like, ‘wait, Ian’s on there, too,’ and I was like, ‘no way.’”

Minkel said the Big Ten, in which the Spartans were 1-7 in dual meets and which featured a ranked opponent at every turn, is the perfect tune-up for competing in the NCAA finals. Even more so, the Big Ten Championships last weekend in State College, Pa., were more competitive than the NCAA Tournament will be.

“We had the draw from hell in the first round — six No. 1 seeds and two defending national champs,” Minkel said.

“That’s one good thing about the Big Ten Championships. In some ways, it’s tougher than the NCAAs because the talent there is more compressed. (For the 133-pound weight class), six of the top eight guys (in the country) are there. In the first round, you’re wrestling somebody tough and in the semifinals, it could be a National Championship match. You don’t get that in any other conference or any other tournament.”

Though they’ll be competing on the national stage for the first time in their young careers, Hinton and Olanowski were clear on their expectations for themselves and how they hoped to return from St. Louis.

“All-American,” Olanowski said. “I made it. Anything can happen at the national tournament. Every year, someone they don’t expect to do anything does something. I’m expecting to be that person.”

Said Hinton: “I’m a freshman going in with nothing to lose and everything to gain. … If I go out and wrestle my best — All-American for sure.”

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