It’s becoming a weekly thing, well, that’s how it would seem.
I mentioned this briefly in my weekly (well, somewhat weekly) piece that I write for themat.com. I didn’t speak as personally there, but the last few Fridays, some local wrestling fans and I join up at one of Lancaster’s biggest sports bars – The Brickyard.
It’s quite the little spot, although I was hesitant about the place at first, because here in Amish Country, I believe the City of Lancaster has an identity problem. It’s trying to be a big little city, but this is saloon territory. So many corner bars and little pubs around, it makes a place like the Brickyard more of a misnomer.
Eighty-eight TVs line the bottom floor of a converted warehouse on the corner of Prince and Lemon Streets and it’s getting to be a good place to watch, of all things, wrestling.
It started simply enough, I was just moving into my new house down by Clipper Magazine Stadium when I got a call from one of my friends in Minnesota. There was a big storm that came through, making it impossible for him to cover the Minnesota-Iowa State dual with InterMat’s Live Text Coverage.
“Crap!” I said to myself … or perhaps aloud. I scurried around to try to find places in the area that had the Big Ten Network. I sure as hell didn’t have it on my Comcast Cable system.
I called up my watering hole, Brendee’s, just down the street on Lemon. It’s the place you might have heard me discuss darts and such. Well, that’s a no go. So I call up the Brickyard – sure enough, they have it.
Long story short, I watched Minnesota-Iowa State in a booth with fellow wrestling junkies Tammy Tedesco (from the NWCA office) and Mike Catullo, the assistant wrestling coach at nearby Franklin & Marshall College.
Next up, a Sunday evening with Tammy and Mike and another F&M assistant, this time from lacrosse, jumped in as the rest of the bar watched the Packers-Giants, we watched the ESPNU Invitational with Oklahoma-Wisconsin and Oklahoma State-Nebraska.
87 TV’s on the football game, one on wrestling. Of course, after the broadcast was done, it was back to 88 TV’s on football. We had a TV about 10 seconds ahead of most of the bar, so when Lawrence Tynes missed his second field goal, I yell “He shanked it!”
A table full of Giants fans in earshot turned, looked up, and then saw Tynes miss … then we got an evil scowl when I realized we were ahead of the game, literally. But I digress.
Then, it’s Indiana-Wisconsin. The F&M crew is out after work; I again mosey up to the back seating section, get a table, and actually have my friend Annie as our waitress/server/whatever. It’s Indiana-Wisconsin. Another Friday.
Now comes last Friday. Doubleheader!
We’ve got Illinois-Michigan and Minnesota-Iowa. We had the usual suspects, with one notable add-on, the infamous “gripsnhips” from those of you familiar with the forums.
I guess it’s been contagious, because of hearing of our trips to watch wrestling on Friday at the Brickyard, even NWCA Executive Director Mike Moyer made an appearance. He and his son Evan watched the match from another booth (each booth has its own TV), so there was half of the NWCA office watching wrestling.
It should be noted that the place is actually a pretty good restaurant during normal people hours and doesn’t really go “bar” until about 11 – so no, it wasn’t a smoke-filled saloon; it was the non-smoking dining area. Just an FYI.
Best thing about the Brickyard – it’s three blocks from my house, so what amounts to a four-minute walk to see wrestling, house some wings and enjoy time outside of the office with friends.
Another story to tell
While that Brickyard story was likely something that many might NOT be interested in, here’s something that won’t get noticed by anyone, which is why I’m talking about it.
For those of you that might not be familiar with some of the smaller programs in Division I, Lancaster County houses two programs, Millersville and F&M.
Millersville’s a PSAC school which competes in Division II in nearly everything, and F&M, a member of the Centennial Conference in Division III, except in wrestling and squash. Yes, squash.
Well, Millersville’s about seven minutes from my place and the school was hosting the five-team East Region Duals on Sunday … Super Bowl Sunday.
I went over four a round, I’d planned on staying longer, but with no power at the table and no wireless internet, my time there would be limited.
Saw an old face from the past as soon as I walked in – Duquesne’s Jayk Cobbs. The current 141-pounder is a Great Bridge grad – one of three or four on the team – and greeted me immediately as he pulled a Gatorade from his cooler.
“Wassup Twink,” said Cobbs. Jayk’s a great kid and has grown into a decent-sized 141 pounder after wrestling his senior year at 112 pounds and taking third in the state.
Damn, am I getting old? Cobbs and former youth-middle school-high school teammate Jared King once sat behind me on a 15-hour bus ride to Southeast Regionals in Jacksonville one year.
Cobbs was seventh grade, King in fifth.
“Mister Twinkieman!” happily the two would chant … for almost the entire ride, pulling my seat back and throwing skittles at me. It took all my restraint not to choke the crap out of them. Yeah, everyone back home knows me by my nickname. And for the record – I hate Twinkies.
Now Cobbs is a sophomore at Duquesne and King a senior in high school. Weird.
Anyway, I made the rounds … watch Reggie Wright of Delaware State coach his small squad to their first win of the season (well, in almost two or three seasons). Talked to Millersville coach Neil Barnes, who said his team was happy to finally be able to watch the Super Bowl at home this year. Last year, with the event held in Middletown, Del., his team didn’t get to see the game until midway through the third quarter after driving back.
Caught up with Liberty assistant Paul Anthony, a friend from back in the Virginia days when he was coaching with Don Shuler at Brookville High School in Lynchburg and pow-wowed with Scott Shipman and Dick Wince of Gardner-Webb.
Coach Wince has a lot of good stories to tell, as does Shipman.
In asking Scott about the event and the season, he acknowledges the difficulties some of the teams in the East Region have with recruiting and budgets and low scholarship allotments.
“We’ve got three or four kids that weren’t starting at the beginning of the year in our lineup,” he said.
Millersville and Del State got their first wins of the season, leaving just three teams in Division I without a win this year.
I stood around, watching and thinking. “Man, I was at the National Duals less than a month ago, now I’m standing in a small gym, watching (somewhere) 11 wrestlers that will make the tournament.”
That’s compared to watching a dual at the National Duals where 17-18 in just one dual meet would reach the tournament. The smaller programs, specifically those in the East Region always have an uphill battle. Only one seed in recent memory (#10 Daniel Elliott two years ago for Gardner-Webb) and no Round of 12 finishes in the last eight years.
The last All-American out of the East Region came in 1998 when Derek DelPorto placed at heavyweight for Slippery Rock. In 2003, Millersville’s Derek Sola gave Oklahoma State’s Zack Esposito a good go in the opening round.
Some schools have a few more hurdles … like tuition. Liberty, Gardner-Webb and Duquesne are private schools with high tuition, whereas Delaware State and Millersville are state schools.
Regardless, I left after the third round to plan for the Super Bowl, where our normal Friday Night wrestling crew came over, chowed down and watched together, football, instead of wrestling.
1 Comment
May 23, 2008 at 4:32 pm
[...] in this town. Seriously. On Mondays, it’s the ABG with a wing special; Tuesday, it’s The Brickyard, Brendee’s, Fulton and practically every other place, too. Wednesdays, definitely the 915 [...]