Categories: College Sports

The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute wrestling program is not the easiest to find.

It’s a program that is far from the spotlight, which at RPI shines brightest up the road at Houston Field House on the Division I hockey team. That, however, doesn’t stifle the work ethic for these Engineers.

Albany Academy graduate Stuart Curtis, a Clifton Park native, came one no-call away from All-American status last year at nationals, and Niskayuna graduate Omar Abdoun believes he has a shot at placing at nationals this year.

Abdoun admits he wasn’t sure what to think about the club team in the basement, until he showed up for practice.

“I never thought I didn’t want to do it, but I did think it might be at a different level,” Abdoun said. “Then you go to that first or second practice, and you see wrestling is wrestling. It’s not Dance Dance Revolution. We put in a lot of hard work here.”

The program is technically a club sport — but don’t use that word around the wrestling room — so it isn’t listed on the RPI athletics website. The wrestling room is in the basement of the ’87 Gymnasium, converted from what used to be the visiting football team’s locker room. Just a yard or two from the center of the mat, a structural support beam for the building drops through the mat and is padded up to help avoid injury.

Eighth-year coach and Galway graduate Brad Nelson has aspirations of eventually ushering the program into the Division III ranks. Until that happens, he continues to run it as he would a Division III team.

“To these guys, ‘club’ is an ugly word,” Nelson said. “Some people think of club as, you know . . . there’s some hard stuff to do in the summer, but there’s some lacksadaisicalness there. Here, this is run no different from a Division III program. We just don’t have the draw I would like, yet.”

Both Curtis and Abdoun are among four wrestlers at 197 pounds, and those four will wrestle off this week to determine who represents the team at the Northeast Conference Championships on Feb. 28 at the University of New Hampshire. At that tournament, wrestlers will qualify for the National Collegiate Wrestling Association tournament, which runs March 12-14 in Allen, Texas.

Last year, Curtis lost by a point in overtime in the blood round, or wrestleback round, where a win would have vaulted him to a finish in the top eight and an All-American designation. Earlier in the match, Nelson said, Curtis’ opponent received a warning for stalling. All through overtime, Curtis was taking shots while his opponent was not, was doing all the work while his opponent ran the danger of giving up a decisive stalling point. The referee didn’t give the stalling point, though, and Curtis ended up losing by one.

Curtis didn’t spend too much time sulking.

“After the match, I shook the guy’s hand, I was respectful and everything, I got off the mat and went to sit in the corner,” Curtis said. “I was just silent. Coach came over and told me, ‘Next year is your year. All the work will pay off.’ I told myself, ‘Next year has got to be my year.’ That night, I went back to the hotel and fell asleep, probably at 10 o’clock, I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I was focused right when I got home — I started lifting again and running. I got in really good shape for this year.”

Curtis is 14-4 so far this season. He would have more matches, but has battled some injury and illness. Abdoun is 6-6, having had to work through knee injuries. He also misses out on some dual-meet bouts because Curtis is the team’s top 197-pounder.

“My biggest goal is just to do better than I have done,” Abdoun said. “I definitely want to try to make some noise at regionals and nationals, hopefully place top three or four at regionals, win as many matches as I can at nationals, maybe even place.”

Curtis is fairly confident he will place at nationals. He said the biggest adjustment coming to the college mats was learning more about technique and strategy.

“In high school, I focused more on my conditioning and strength to get me by, but at college, I had to really work on my technique,” Curtis said. “I had to push myself to learn new moves and learn to counter things, because I wasn’t stronger than everybody else anymore. That was probably my biggest adjustment.”

Nelson said Curtis has improved quite a bit at that, become pretty good on his feet and on top. Also, his strength has increased.

“He lifts religiously, and going from his sophomore to his junior year, last year was his first year at 197, and before that he was at 184,” Nelson said. “Over that summer, he really hit the weights hard and put on solid weight, then cut to 197. He’s a solid 197-pounder, and that seemed to help him, too. I don’t know if it was so much the jump up in weight, but the confidence level.”

Abdoun also has proven a sound technical wrestler. Nelson thinks he would benefit from cutting to wrestle at 184, but at this point in the season, that wouldn’t be healthy.

Next season, both will welcome another local into the room — Omar’s younger brother Khaled, also from Niskayuna. That will help drive Omar even more, as it was about a year ago the older brother had to stop holding back when the two wrestled.

“He really picked up his game,” he said. “Now, when we’re wrestling, we’re really wrestling. I’m not just going through the motions and teaching him technique, we’re really going at it. Especially when you’re wrestling your younger brother, that’s probably the time you’re going to go your hardest. It’s terrible if your younger brother takes you down. And if you’re the younger brother, you want to overcome your older brother.”