Year two of the Zeke Jones era began Friday at the Riches Wrestling Complex with the ASU wrestling program's intrasquad meet.
After a season of rebuilding, expectations have risen for the Sun Devils and their highly touted head coach.
The scrimmage was packed full of spectators, including ASU alumnus and NCAA champion Anthony Robles.
There was a lot of enthusiasm at the meet, and for good reason. The Sun Devils have the No. 1 recruiting class in the nation, including freshman 285 pounder Tanner Hall, who won his match against redshirt senior Chance Eskam.
Hall hadn’t wrestled in three years because he was on a mission in Uganda and he was excited to get back on the mat.
“I went on a two-year mission for my church,” Hall said. “When I got back from my mission, I wasn’t able to compete due to some NCAA rules for a year. It’s been a while but it’s a lot of fun to get back out there in front of a crowd and wrestle and have some fun.”
During his time away from wrestling, Hall said he really saw what he missed when he couldn’t compete and it made him appreciate the game a lot more.
“I would go back to that saying ‘You don’t know what you have until it’s gone,'” Hall said. “You come and wrestle everyday and sometimes it’s tough but that mission that I went on, where I couldn’t wrestle even if I wanted to it really put it in perceptive of how much you should cherish this time that you do get to compete and have fun.”
Head coach Zeke Jones said he was satisfied with the result and wants to see his athletes keep improving as the season continues.
“It’s the start of the year,” Jones said. “I think we're in a good spot. I think we're learning, we're improving, we're getting better. We know where we got to get better at, and we’ll keep working hard."
The team saw seven of the eleven matches in the final end in decisions and for the most part, the scores were usually close and each match was extremely physical.
Freshman Zahid Valencia was one of the many wrestlers who wrestled in both the morning and the afternoon, a grueling challenge that was the first taste of Division I competition for first-year wrestlers on the mat.
Valencia said pushing through that strain on the body mentally and physically is the key to achieving the team's lofty goals.
“Just thinking about the goal that we set for ourselves,” Valencia said. “We have high goals, we want to win a NCAA championship, so just pushing each other. Keeping our motivation just keeps the drive in us.”
The meet was going well until the penultimate match, when junior Wesley Moore injured his knee during his match with senior Josh DaSiliveira.
The extent of Moore's injury is unknown.
It's tough to project how the Sun Devils will stack up against the best competition in the country, but if their effort and intensity in Friday's scrimmage is any indication, the team will be ready to compete hard when the season begins.
ASU's first official meet is on Nov. 8 in Morgantown, West Virginia against the Duals.
Reach the reporter at osoussi@asu.edu or follow @omarksoussi on Twitter.
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