Wrestler in the Spotlight: Devin Poppen
Devin Poppen is the wrestler in the spotlight for November 28, 2009. Devin took first place at the Pacific Coast Championships in Seaside, Oregon. Devon did a number of impressive things this weekend that stood out to the coaches to earn him the Wrestler of the Week award. The first thing that Devin did was wrestle extremely hard. Devin's style of wrestling is the type of style the sport of wrestling needs to fill up arenas across America. Devin comes at you with everything he has, heavy hands, non-stop aggressive action. The second thing that stood out to the coaches was how Devin did a good job of just worry about wrestling. He had many instances at the tournament where he could have got distracted by the referee, the scoreboard, or the clock and not one of those things were of his concern. He let the coaches take care of those issues and Devin continued to focus on scoring his next point. The third thing Devin did was attack in the top position. Devin did not get on top and look to ride his opponent out. (There is a time and place for that when the situation arises.) When Devin got on top, he was attacking and working hard to score back points and get pins. Wrestling with this controlled abandon was an advantage to Devin mentally. Yes, sometimes his opponents would escape or reverse Devin but Devin always put a fear in his opponents that he was going to keep attacking with relentless pressure until the final whistle. My personal favorite thing that Devin Poppen did this weekend was light up the scoreboard. I believe every match he wrestled, he had double digits on the scoreboard. This is good for wrestling. Make it your goal wrestlers to walk on the mat and light up the scoreboard. We need to make wrestling exciting!
