As the Cliff Keen Wrestling Club nears the Olympic Trials in April, CKWC coach and veteran blogger Andy Hrovat will periodically share the progress, results and experiences from the road and inside the practice room. In his first installment, Hrovat writes about his own experiences since retiring from freestyle competition last summer, lauds the training environment in Ann Arbor and previews the club’s next two international events.
MONDAY, JANUARY 16
It’s been awhile since I have taken the time to write, and I want to start out by saying thanks for all the positive feedback I received from my time in Russia. It was a great experience for me training over there. I learned so much not just about wrestling but also about life and the world. I will be able to use that experience for the rest of my life. Currently, I am using what I learned as an athlete to help train some wrestlers who are preparing for the Olympic Team Trials.
After I retired from wrestling this past summer, I was able to stay around Colorado Springs and work with the coaches at USA Wrestling and help out at the national team camps before the World Championships. I have always said wrestling is my life and being there was the first step in my international coaching career. At the end of summer, I packed up my car and headed east to Naperville, Ill. I was able to coach this fall at the Overtime School of Wrestling. I only ended up staying there for nine weeks, because most of the wrestlers begin team workouts at their high schools. But it was quite a learning experience since I have not been around much youth and high school wrestling in a long time. After I finished up at Overtime I had a few options as to where I was going to go, and the one that made most sense for my career was going back to Ann Arbor, Mich. I lived in Ann Arbor for almost 12 years as a student and then as a freestyle athlete, so this definitely feels like my second home right behind Cleveland. Currently, we have six full-time freestyle guys training here to make a run at the Olympic team and Olympic medals.
I was not ready to retire when I did, my goal was to make another Olympic team and put myself in the best situation to win Olympic Gold. I had a great year last year training in Russia and had some success at international tournaments, but in the end, my body had other plans. So, I made the right decision to hang up the old singlet. I can say this with pride, but from the time I graduated from college in 2002 until the day I retired, nobody in the U.S. wrestled more international matches then I did. I traveled everywhere to compete against the world’s best, and in that span, I visited something like 17 different countries. The point I am trying to make is my expertise is: freestyle wrestling and the opportunity to work with the guys in Ann Arbor is a dream come true. I believe the training environment in Ann Arbor is one of the best, not just in the U.S., but in the world. We have the best facility, world-class wrestlers, world-class coaches and a support network that has the vision to keep this growing for all future generations of wrestlers who have aspirations of being an Olympic champion.
In this week’s blog, I just wanted to give an update as to what I was doing and where I am coaching. On January 21, our team of athletes who represent the Cliff Keen Wrestling Club and the New York Athletic Club will be traveling to Guelph, Ontario, to wrestle. Our athletes have been out of competition since the first weekend of December, so we want to get a good tournament under our belt before we send the guys to the Dave Schultz tournament in Colorado Springs and then to Ukraine for a training camp/competition. I was selected to coach the U.S. team in Ukraine, so I will be providing both written and video blogs about our time over there. I, along with all of our CKWC members, want to help promote freestyle wrestling and give a look into what it takes to be the best in the world as we prepare for the Olympic Team Trials. There is no greater achievement in wrestling like competing for and winning an Olympic Gold medal, so I hope you will enjoy our journey with us.
Andy
