Wrestling 2025-26

[LGR14]

God. Horrific tournament.

Is it surprising? This seems to have been one of the worst seasons in my recent memory.

Three #2 seeds losing in the quarters is surprising. 

[ugarte]

God. Horrific tournament.

Is it surprising? This seems to have been one of the worst seasons in my recent memory.

Three #2 seeds losing in the quarters is surprising. 

Exactly. The Ivy tournament was mildly disappointing but we got in everyone who had the potential to do any damage. seeds 2, 2, 3, 6 and 11 and we have nobody in the semis. The only guy who lost to someone he was supposed to lose to is Cornella.

To move on we've got:

141: Cornella v [18] Noble (Air Force)
149: Joy v [4] Gaj (VT)
157: Shapiro v [9] Cardenas (Stanford)
174: Ruiz v [4] Kharchla (tOSU)

At least Ruiz looked good in dominating his two consolation opponents to get back to the boys round. This is the blood round - winner gets AA, loser has all offseason to think about things.

Action starts at 8 on ESPN streaming.  (the semifinals that i no longer care about (bitter) are on espn 2)

[ugarte]

The nightmare tournament continues.

141: Cornella can't get out from Noble in the second period and even gets tilted for NF4. Down late, with time winding down, he went for a big throw. No dice. He lost the exchange and ended up on his back. Pinned and done.

149: Joy couldn't wrap up takedowns whenever he got a leg. Just when it looked like he would, not only did Gaj neutralize the position, he trapped Joy with his back exposed for a 7 point move. Joy couldn't recover and lost 7-2.

157: Shapiro has had a lot of history with Cardenas and had the better of it recently. This match was wild despite the score with multiple scrambles that almost led to points both ways. In the waning seconds of the third period they got in another scramble with Shapiro stacking Cardenas up but Cardenas holding a leg. I didn't see the ref signal a takedown so I thought it was heading to SV but when the clock hit zero, Shapiro rolled off and exhaled as the scoreboard changed to 4-1 and we have our only All-American of 2026. Spoiler! Up next is [7] Kannon Webster of Minnesota.

174: Ruiz was  Kharchla (tOSU) - Down 3-2 heading into the third period, Ruiz had a choice - cut Kharchla and take the whole period to try for a takedown or ride for the full period and go to SV by earning the riding time point. The corner suggested the former but he chose the latter. It worked well for a minute but the position got awkward and Kharchla ended up reversing him. Ruiz escaped, but down 5-3 with time running out, Kharchla basically ran away for 15 seconds for the win.

All this and Princeton beat Cornell.

[LGR14]

They won't approve my registration, but someone should invite the Cornell wrestling forum posters here, as that site is closing imminently. 

Perhaps this site could create a wrestling-specific space, instead of "Other Sports"?

[ugarte]

What a brutal tournament. To nobody's surprise, after falling to the 7th place match, Shapiro medically forfeited out and will take 8th place.

What a nightmare of a tournament and honestly a frustrating season. I'm on vacation so I'm going to take a week to settle my mind (or get angrier;  coin flip) then write a season recap with a short preview of next year.

[dag14]

That was awful.  Men also lost in the first round of the ECAC hockey tournament.  At least Lax beat Princeton.

As I was yelling at the screen as each wrestler lost, I had to remind myself that they care way more than I do -- as a fan -- when they don't perform as well as expected or as well as they hope.  One can learn from failure/disappointment and I hope that is true in this case.

[ugarte]

3x All-American Meyer Shapiro is in the portal. Finished 3rd, 5th and 8th in his three years at Cornell. Rumors of tension between him and the coaching staff.

Weird to say but a very disappointing Big Red career for the U17 and U20 world gold medalist Multiple concussions and losses in the tournament for a guy who was talked about as someone who could be Cornell's third 4x NCAA champ.

[ugarte]

Offseason wrestling:

Kyle Dake is, once again, headed to Final X for a spot on the Senior world team at 86kg. He lost at Final X to Zahid Valencia in 2025 and Valencia went on to win gold at Worlds.

Other Cornellians did not fare well. Arujau moved up to 65kg and finished 7th. Jacob Cardenas finished 8th at 92kg.

In age group qualifying, the incoming freshmen Isaiah (57kg) and Elijah (61kg) Cortez both took gold and will represent Team USA at U20 Worlds.

Arseni Kikiniou, for the second consecutive year, won double gold in freestyle and greco at the U17 qualifying for Team USA. Last year he took world silver in freestyle and bronze in greco. His father is a multiple Olympian and, since moving to the US, has made Team USA multiple times. He just finished in second place at the US Open in his late 40s. Arseni is Class of '27; unclear if he'll take an additional gap year before he arrives on campus.

[billhoward]

They won't approve my registration, but someone should invite the Cornell wrestling forum posters here, as that site is closing imminently.  Perhaps this site could create a wrestling-specific space, instead of "Other Sports"?

eLynah could have separate space for wrestling. But why stop with a separate section for wrestlng. It would also make sense to have separate spaces for:

• Wrestling
• Football
• Basketball
• Women's hockey
• Women's sports apart from women's hockey
• Ivy League sports & Cornell-versus comparisons (includng discussions of the relative merits of teams, coaches, budgets. Daily Princetonian ~5 years back compared Ivy sports success over all sports over all years since the league went formal in 1956. IIRC, Princeton and Harvard were the leaders.
• Facilities

When a sport has its own section it may generate more readership, comments, and maybe impact on Cornell. Somebody may ask "Why under the banner of eLynah?" Anwer: "eLynah has the eyeballs already." Also, it's proactive.  At some point Cornell is going to think about its own Rah-Cornell.org forum, which would be the kiss of death (for fan interest) on par with a girls parochial school forum about boys and dating that is moderated by the good sisters.

[stereax]

They won't approve my registration, but someone should invite the Cornell wrestling forum posters here, as that site is closing imminently.  Perhaps this site could create a wrestling-specific space, instead of "Other Sports"?

eLynah could have separate space for wrestling. But why stop with a separate section for wrestlng. It would also make sense to have separate spaces for:

• Wrestling
• Football
• Basketball
• Women's hockey
• Women's sports apart from women's hockey
• Ivy League sports & Cornell-versus comparisons (includng discussions of the relative merits of teams, coaches, budgets. Daily Princetonian ~5 years back compared Ivy sports success over all sports over all years since the league went formal in 1956. IIRC, Princeton and Harvard were the leaders.
• Facilities

When a sport has its own section it may generate more readership, comments, and maybe impact on Cornell. Somebody may ask "Why under the banner of eLynah?" Anwer: "eLynah has the eyeballs already." Also, it's proactive.  At some point Cornell is going to think about its own Rah-Cornell.org forum, which would be the kiss of death (for fan interest) on par with a girls parochial school forum about boys and dating that is moderated by the good sisters.

I mean...

MHockey
WHockey
MSports
WSports
Ticket exchange
Unrelated shit

Sounds fair to me. And then in each of the MSports/WSports you could do subforums for any sports people care about (wrestling, lacrosse, etc).

"Why is hockey special?" It's eLynah, not eFriedman or eSchoellkopf.

Also, definitely invite the Cornell wrestling forum people here if you can