Tom Eaton (JR. Santa Ana CC, CA, Cedar Rapids, IA) an ex-Marine, wins with basic fundamentals and hard work. "He does not make many mistakes and he is one of the hardest workers in our program, which says a lot, because I think we have a team of hard workers," said coach Petty. He has continued to improve after coming back from a serious injury suffered late in the summer, finishing 5-1 at the DWU Open, improving to 8-3 this season wrestling at 174.
"Improvement, improvement, improvement…….If we continue to do our best to keep working to improve each week, each day, in each drill, we will end up reaching our season goals in the conference, region and at nationals. Our hard work will show in our results. We have a lot to continue to work on, but we are also doing some things much better this year that we were not doing last year at this time. We are working hard; either scoring or getting our opponents called for stalling. When we can get everyman committed to the mentality of “every man working hard for every point, every second” then we will see huge improvements as a team," said coach Petty.
Northwestern wrestlers went 14-12 in Mitchell, 5-1 by Eaton (3rd place), Levi Price went 3-2, Lamar Reed went 3-3 (eighth place), David Carter went 2-2, Cole Spree went 1-2, and Kyle Bartlett went 0-2. Northwestern had seven pins at the Open, including three by Price.
Levi Price (JR. Cannon Falls, MN), is leading the team in pins with four, which is no surprise since he led the team last season with 17 pins in one semester. He is on pace to break the school record set by Lyle Lundgren (24) in 1980.
“As a team, we are much improved from last seasons start and that makes us happy any time we see improvement. We can only control the things in our power," said coach Petty.
As a team we improved from 8 to 9 pins and from 4 to 6 majors this week. I see us building a solid base of hard work and we will go to work on more technical things from this point in the season.
2007-08 media guide
