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Second-year Virginia wrestling head coach Steve Garland leads his team into the ACC Championships this weekend at the Comcast Center in College Park, Md. The young Cavaliers have had a banner season, posting a school-record 18 dual-meet wins and now look to parlay that success into some postseason magic. Garland sat down to discuss the upcoming ACC Championships and his team’s shot at bringing home a title.
Q: What are your expectations heading into the ACC Championships Saturday?
Garland: You would hope every team’s goal going into the ACCs is to win it, so I don’t think it’s a surprise that our goal is to win it. But I really think, based on what our guys have done this season. Guys like Rocco Caponi, Chris Henrich, Michael Chaires, Eric Albright, Brent Jones, Ross Gitomer, who could do some great things. You look at a guy like Nick Nelson. In my opinion, obviously Joe Carmanica of NC State is the guy at 141, but Nick is right there with the rest. A guy like Shawn Harris, nobody wants to get him in the first round. There’s a reason we call him the Hurricane.’ The kid is a focused, hard working guy and he wants to wrestle hard.
I really, truly believe that there is nothing we could have done differently this year. Maybe I’ll look back a month from now and say something different. But right now I really believe we trained them the right way and our schedule was great. Nobody got hurt and the guys that were banged up fought through their injuries. We had a ton of guys show a lot of heart and grit this year by wrestling over 40 matches. There is something to be said about that. The whole point of us wrestling all those matches is so our guys would be ready for the ACC Tournament at the end of the year. And here we are.
Q: Forty percent of your lineup this weekend is freshmen. How do you expect them to respond?
Garland: You live by the sword and you die by the sword. We’re going to live and die by how they do. You expect the seniors to give you what they are supposed to give you, but with 18-year-old kids sometimes you never know what you’re going to get. Sometimes they look great and other times they don’t. When I was a freshman, you would see something brilliant out of me, and the next match I would lose to a nobody and people what happened to me. It’s just the age, the lack of experience. There are those negatives that just come with being a freshman.
That being said, I think our freshmen are special in that they are capable of all these great things. Michael Chaires has 30 wins, finished second at the Southern Scuffle and was ranked 13th in the country in one poll as a true freshman. Chris Henrich has gotten better every, single day. He has gotten better and better to the point where now I don’t think there is any question that if he makes the ACC final and does what he is supposed to do, there is no reason you don’t take that kid to nationals based on how great a wrestler he is. Nick Nelson and Shawn Harris have had shimmers of brilliance but others that weren’t so great. The key is to make sure their minds and bodies are right. If these guys step up and do well, I don’t think there is any question we have a shot to win the ACC championship.
Q: How do you show the freshmen how much the intensity is ratcheted up in the postseason?
Garland: You try to tell them that, but you try not to scare them as well. In practice the other day, Eric Albright told them not to get caught up in everyone else’s emotions just go out and wrestle your matches. If you get caught up in the emotions there, you will be an emotional wreck. You will be physically and emotionally exhausted before your match comes.
Q: What was practice like this week?
Garland: We’ve had long, drawn-out drills which we never do during the regular season. It’s so you get muscle repetition but you’re also very fresh. It’s nothing taxing on the body, so their bodies feel great. We ended practices with a good, hard live go to get that lung burn. We only did one live go instead of four or five like earlier in the season. We had a lot of talking and breaking down of film. We sat down and everyone brought in their notebooks and made notes of what they needed to work on. It’s been very methodical and specific to each guy’s needs.
Q: How have the veterans helped in preparation for ACCs?
Garland: Rocco and Eric each have a sense of calm about them. They are both like, it’s OK, just relax. Do what you’ve got to do.’ They keep things even-keeled and don’t let things get out of control. They are both very quietly confident, especially with Rocco. There’s no worry in his face. He knows he has had a great year and now it’s just time to go out and do what he has to do. There is a level of excitement too for them because they know they have a better team. They are more excited in training because they know they can win it. The Maryland match helped with that too. There is a lot of that calm confidence this week.
Q: You wrestled an extremely close, hard-fought match with Maryland two weeks ago. How will that benefit your team?
Garland: It can only help both teams. Whenever you get into a battle that intense and that emotional, that is great preparation because that is the way every ACC match will be. We used that as a springboard for our training for ACCs.
Q: How are things different this year for you as compared to last season in your first year as coach at Virginia?
Garland: Last year I was just hoping to survive and it was kind of scary. Now, for the first time in a long time, I’m sleeping the week before the tournament and I really feel like we’ve done all we can do. We just need to get there and wrestle.