David Taylor, Ed Ruth, and Morgan McIntosh (right) are the present and future of Penn State Wrestling...
Taylor, the Big Ten's 2011 Champion at 157 pounds, received a unique wrestling education as revealed in a terrific profile by Lori Shontz of BlueWhite Illustrated...
From the very beginning, from his very first wrestling tournament, David Taylor had to follow one rule: Don't pin your opponent.Taylor has developed into a takedown machine and has 14 Technical Falls this season. To put that number into perspective, it equals the entire Iowa team total for the season.
Actually, the rule was a little stricter than that: Don't even attempt to pin someone. It came straight from Taylor's father, a former wrestler who had "gotten serious" about the sport again after his 6-year-old son tagged along to wrestling practice with some neighbors and couldn't wait to go back.
David Taylor Sr. had never stopped attending wrestling matches. He began observing more closely, and he decided the kids who went for pins, as a group, had a flaw: They were so focused on hitting their big pinning combinations that they couldn't do anything else.
"We're not going to be like the other kids," Taylor Sr. told his son before his first tournament as a 7-year-old. "You have to tech fall the guy."
The "next big thing" for Penn State Wrestling could be Morgan McIntosh from Calvary Chapel High School in Pacific Grove, California. McIntosh is the nation's top-ranked 189-pound prep wrestler and did not allow a takedown during his junior or senior seasons of high school.
Here is McIntosh winning his third consecutive California state championship, courtesy of Flow Wrestling...
Last April McIntosh wrestled Ed Ruth, Penn State's 2011 Big Ten Champion at 174 pounds, in the 84 KG (185 lbs.) Freestyle class at the ASICS FILA Junior Nationals in Cleveland. Ruth won in the Championship bracket (2-0, 5-0), but McIntosh won 4-4, 6-3 in the rematch for Third Place.
Videos courtesy of USA Wrestling and Flow Wrestling...
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