The Central Michigan Chippewas got their guy and they didn’t have to look far to find him! The successor to legendary, longtime head coach Tom Borrelli will be his right-hand man, associate head coach Ben Bennett. The CMU athletic department announced that Bennett will move up to assume head coaching duties on Tuesday morning.  
Bennett has been on the Central Michigan staff for the past 11 years and has overseen CMU winning a pair of MAC regular season titles, along with the 2024 MAC Championships. During that time, seven Central Michigan wrestlers have combined to win 14 conference titles and four wrestlers have earned a spot on the NCAA podium. Additionally, three others were named first or second-team All-Americans following the 2019-20 season, in which the NCAA Tournament was canceled. 
As a competitor, Bennett is one of the most decorated wrestlers in CMU history. He was a top-100 recruit who stayed in-state and became the program’s first, and only, four-time All-American (6,8,6,4). Bennett is one of only three CMU wrestlers to have won four MAC titles. As a junior, Bennett was seeded third in the country at nationals and he earned the second seed as a senior. Bennett’s 121 career wins rank seventh on the school’s all-time wins list. After his first season of competition, Bennett was named the MAC Freshman of the Year. In three of his four years, Bennett earned CMU’s Most Valuable Wrestler honors. 
In 2023, Bennett was named to the CMU Athletics Hall of Fame. 
Bennett will inherit a Central Michigan team that had three national qualifiers in 2024. At this time, it’s unclear who will return or not, only one of them (Corbyn Munson) has exhausted his eligibility. Should Johnny Lovett and Alex Cramer return, CMU could trot out a lineup that features nine of ten returning starters from their MAC-winning squad. Cramer was a conference champion, while Lovett advanced to the bloodround in a brutal 157 lb weight class. 
In dual competition, Central Michigan was 8-8 in 2023-24, but 6-1 against MAC opponents. 
Bennett will be the sixth head coach in Central Michigan wrestling history. 
With Bennett’s promotion, there are now four CMU graduates who are current DI head coaches. He joins Jason Borrelli (American), Luke Smith (CSU Bakersfield), and Scotti Sentes (Campbell). 

The Olympic Trials are in the books and what a spectacle they were! There were upsets, all-time greats that suffered losses, new stars that came to the forefront on the Senior level, happy tears, sad tears, and much more. 
As is the case with big tournaments or events, we’ve picked out some of the interesting facts and trends that emerged from the 2024 Olympic Team Trials. Have fun!
Mason Parris is the first Michigan graduate to represent the United States since Andy Hrovat did so in 2008. 
There has been at least one grad from Iowa and Penn State on each of the last three Olympic men’s freestyle teams. 
An Iowa grad has held down the 57 kg on the Olympic Team in each of the last three teams (Lee, Gilman, Dan Dennis/2016). Provided Lee qualifies the weight at the Last Chance Qualifier. 
Kyle Snyder has now made his 10th consecutive World/Olympic Team. It was also his third Olympic team. All before he turns 29. 
With Aaron Brooks making the squad, you have two wrestlers from Maryland on the men’s freestyle team - three counting the other styles, and Helen Maroulis. 
Kyle Dake and Kyle Snyder are the only holdovers from the 2020(1) men’s freestyle team. 
Maroulis made history by becoming the first American woman to make three Olympic teams. She also is a part of her 14th World/Olympic team. 
Half of the women’s freestyle team is returning from 2020(1). Sarah Hildebrandt, Maroulis, and Kayla Miracle. 
Despite California being one of the early adopters of women’s wrestling and typically a hotbed for women’s freestylers, this is the first time that there have been multiple California natives on the women’s freestyle Olympic team (Dom Parrish and Amit Elor). 
Indiana has two natives on the women’s freestyle team (Hildebrandt/Miracle), plus Mason Parris from the men’s freestyle squad. 
Kennedy Blades will become only the second Illinois native to wrestle at the Olympics in women’s freestyle. Haley Augello (2016) was the first. 
Five of the six women on the Olympic team have already won a world or Olympic medal. Blades, who has never previously made a Senior team, is the exception. 
The 2020(1) Trials featured two high school girls in the finals (Kylie Welker and Kennedy Blades). This year there was just one with Audrey Jimenez (50 kg). 
The Greco-Roman winners featured two sets of wrestlers from the same high school. Dalton Roberts (60 kg) and Adam Coon (130 kg) - Fowlerville, Michigan and Ellis Coleman (67 kg) and Kamal Bey (77 kg) - Oak Park River Forest, Illinois. 
The Olympic Trials finals produced seven rematches from Final X 2023. Kyle Dake/Jason Nolf (MFS; 74 kg), Aaron Brooks/David Taylor (MFS 86 kg), Sarah Hildebrandt/Audrey Jimenez (WFS 50 kg), Kennedy Blades/Adeline Gray (WFS 76 kg), Dalton Roberts/Ildar Hafizov (MGR 60 kg), Kamal Bey/Aliaksandr Kikiniou (MGR 77 kg), and Adam Coon/Cohlton Schultz (MGR 130 kg). 
Only Dake, Hildebrandt, and Bey won those rematches. 
The Trials finals at 65 kg (MFS), 57 kg (WFS), and 62 kg (WFS) featured matchups between 2023 World Team teammates. 
The only Trials finals matches between past World medalists took place on the women’s freestyle side with 57 kg (Maroulis/Winchester), 62 kg (Miracle/Kilty), and 68 kg (Elor/Molinari). Of course, Maroulis/Winchester are two past world champions. 
The only two falls of the Trials finals included a pair of past world champions. Thomas Gilman was pinned in the closing seconds of the deciding bout in his series with Spencer Lee. Jacarra Winchester got pinned by Maroulis in match one. 
At the last Trials, Gilman was involved in the only pin of the entire finals. He scored a fall over Vito Arujau in the first match of their series. 
The 2024 Olympic Trials featured three rematches from the 2020(1) Trials across all three styles. 
The only series’ (5 of them) that needed to go the full three matches occurred on the Greco-Roman side. 
Payton Jacobson is the only wrestler on the Greco team without any Senior World (or Olympic) experience. 
Adam Coon is the only Greco champion from 2020(1) to repeat in 2024. Since the 130 kg weight class has already been qualified for the 2024 Games, Coon will be making his Olympic debut. In 2020(1), the weight class had not been qualified and Coon wasn’t able to do so at the Last Chance Qualifier. 
Across the three styles, Ellis Coleman is the only winner of the Trials who competed at the 2012 Olympic Games. He also needs to qualify the weight to compete in the 2024 Games. 
Scoring in the Olympic Trials was hard to do. Kennedy Blades was the only wrestler to score more than 10 points in any bout. Nobody in men’s freestyle scored more than eight points in any finals matchup. 
The Trials finals featured five matchups between current teammates. 65 kg, 74 kg, and 86 kg in men’s freestyle all saw Nittany Lion Wrestling Club members tangle. 60 kg and 67 kg in Greco-Roman had Army WCAP teammates clashing. 
David Taylor’s series with Aaron Brooks marked the second consecutive Trials that Taylor faced an NLWC teammate. In 2020(1), he defeated Bo Nickal for a slot on the Olympic Team. 
Wrestlers with a bye to the best-of-three finals went a combined 8-5 - including 0-3 in Greco (Spencer Woods, Alan Vera, Cohlton Schultz). 
The combined age for the last two women in the Olympic lineup Elor (20) and Blades (21) is 41. That’s less than Greco-Roman finalist Aliaksandr Kikiniou (44). 

We’re starting off the week with some huge news on the coaching front. On Thursday, as many of us were traveling to the Olympic Trials, news trickled out that Zach Tanelli had stepped down from his position as the head coach of Columbia. 
Now, we’re talking Tanelli again as he has accepted a job as associate head coach at Virginia Tech. The Hokies had an opening on staff after Cody Brewer left for a position with Princeton. 
Tanelli just wrapped up his eighth season at the helm for the Lions. During his tenure at Columbia, the Lions posted a 39-62 dual record - which is a bit misleading as they went 3-12 during each of his first two seasons as was turning the program around. 
The 2022-23 season proved to be one of the best in school history as Tanelli’s team sent a record six wrestlers to Tulsa after scoring the most points in team history at the EIWA Championships. Their 95 points were good enough for fourth place. Columbia duplicated that finish at the 2024 EIWA Championships. 
In Kansas City, at the 2024 NCAA Championships, Tanelli’s 174 lber Lennox Wolak made the semifinals and ended up in sixth place. Wolak became the first wrestler to make the NCAA podium under Tanelli and the school’s first All-American since 2013. At EIWA’s, Wolak and 184 lber Aaron Ayzerov captured conference championships for Columbia. In doing so, they became the first teammates to win EIWA championships in the same year for Columbia since 1935. 
Wolak already announced that he will join Virginia Tech as a graduate transfer. 
On Friday, former Hokie assistant, Cody Brewer, announced he was moving on to Princeton as an assistant coach, opening up a spot on the Virginia Tech staff. 
The Hokies are coming off a season in which they finished seventh in the nation - amassing 64 points on the strength of four All-Americans, one of which being Caleb Henson - the national champion at 149 lbs and only the second in school history. 
Tanelli and Hokies Associate Head Coach, Jared Frayer, both spent time at Wisconsin about 15 years ago. They overlapped during Tanelli’s final year in Madison, which is when Frayer joined the Badger staff.