Nov 30, 2019
When November 24, 2019 finally came, it put a close on the
building era of the Little Rock wrestling program. It’s been 616
days since the announcement during the 2018 NCAA Division I
Championships of a new Division I program.
For coach Neil Erisman, it’s been 522 days since he was introduced
as the first head coach in program history. For wrestling fans in
the state of Arkansas, it was a decade and a half in the
making.
The only time a major state school had sponsored wrestling, as you
learned in Episode 1 of Rocked Up, came in the 1950s at Arkansas
State. That was more of a pet project of a wrestling coach rather
than a bonafide college athletics program. That also pre-dated the
NCAA’s divisional structure.
So history was going to be made when the first whistle blew at 2
p.m. on Sunday, November 24, 2019 at the Jack Stephens Center on
the campus of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
These are the final hours leading to the culmination of the
building process and the commencement of competition. One last
practice. They weigh in, at home, for the first time, in 24
hours.
Welcome to Rocked Up, the story of the foundation and formation
of the first Division I college wrestling program in Arkansas,
starting in November of 2019 at the University of Arkansas at
Little Rock. This is the finale to that story. We started the
journey developing the foundation of wrestling in the state of
Arkansas and now we’ve moved on to the formation of the team,
because to tell the full story of this program, you have to start
at the very beginning.
Where one door closes, another opens, and in Little Rock, we close
the book on how this all got started. Now, the coaches,
administration and athletes at Little Rock will write their own
stories.
Thank you for listening.
I’m Jason Bryant.
Rocked Up is a presentation of the Mat Talk Podcast Network and
can be found on the web at GetRockedUp.com or at MatTalkOnline.com.
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