Wrestlers battle adversity for emotional shared conference title

The score may have read 70-to-70 at the end of the day, but Nebraska's co-Big 12 Conference Championship with Iowa State was anything but shared.

The atmosphere said it all.

The banter of over 3,000 fans getting every penny's worth, most clad in red, was a testament.

Victory could be seen in the ear-to-ear grin of Nebraska coach Mark Manning as he lifted Craig Brester following the 197-pound finals match, or in the way he was lifting the team trophy moments later.

"I could have picked him up higher, I was so jacked up," Manning said. "You've got to realize, (ISU's) Jake Varner was one of the top recruits in the country — I mean he was big time. And for Craig to beat him, after he'd lost to him two times, that's a big deal right there.

"We needed it, obviously, but Craig needed it because he's worked his tail off, and there's no one more deserving than Craig Brester. He's a lot of the heart and fight of this team."

t was through the tears of Brandon Browne too, that the championship was claimed. As he bounded to the center of the mat, arms raised, soaking in every bit of the screaming fans and his own screaming voice, victory was with the Huskers.

They won it through the calm confidence of Brester, who nodded his head in confident anticipation as the tied team scores of Nebraska and Iowa State were announced just before his finals match against No. 1 ranked Varner.

It was won with the ever-steady performance brought week in and week out by Jordan Burroughs and his still-undefeated season.

Lest we forget, Vince Jones won his own championship honors at 184 pounds in uncharacteristically quiet fashion for the team clown. 

"Our preparation allowed them to really do that," Manning said. "Then just their heart took over."

If you want to say Iowa State was a co-champion, go ahead. The final score is all you need, and it's all you'll get. Ask anyone who was in the NU Coliseum Saturday evening, and they'd be lying if they said Nebraska wasn't the prevailing team.

Four individual championships say a lot for an emotionally battered team like Nebraska. The tumultuous season the Huskers fought through prior to Saturday elevated every aspect of the night.

"The last thing I told them as far as like motivational really, is no team in the country has gone through the adversity you guys have experienced," Manning said. "It just shows a lot of heart and a lot of stubbornness. That's what our team's all about, what these guys showed."

Entering the finals, the team championship was Iowa State's to lose. They had seven finalists compared to Nebraska's five. They had the looming head-to-head matchup at 197-pounds, one that Brester had never won.

If you saw the Cyclones exit the floor, you wouldn't know they had just won the Big 12 Championship three years in a row. They left the Coliseum as Huskers and their fans passed around the trophy.

"I know people at Nebraska are proud of these guys, Manning said. "They epitomize what our state's all about."

You could try to find more evidence of a co-championship throughout the night, but you'd have to look past an eighth-year coach in Manning lugging around the championship trophy as he shook hands. You'd also have to make your way through the clusters of wide-eyed kids getting up-close glimpses of the four championship medals garnering the necks of Brester, Browne, Jones and Burroughs.

As journalists, we try to stray from the cliché. In Nebraska wrestling 2009, that's pretty hard to do. Anyone wanting to know what the Cornhuskers' season was like needed only to see the fight they showed Saturday night.

The Cinderella story of the Big Red wasn't restricted to the mat, but showed in the hearts of each wrestler sporting an N on their uniform and a heart on their sleeve.

When Burroughs gave up the opening takedown, and then minutes of riding time in the 157-pound finals match, it was a moment tuned to unveil a champion.

"Sometimes it's a mental game, getting taken down and rode out for a little while in the first period," Burroughs said. "A couple bad things flashed through my head, but we go over scenarios like this in practice every day."

Iowa State had already claimed one individual championship and two more runner-up medals going into Burrough's match. As Nebraska's first wrestler in the finals, the junior fought back aggressively.

After his win, Burroughs said the team had inspiration and confidence coming into the finals. Something just seemed to click from then on.

"Nebraska wrestling is all heart; we went all on heart and all on hard work," Manning said. "We're just blue collar. We're proud of these guys. A lot of people didn't think we had a chance."

It's probably why a stoic Cael Sanderson, ISU's coach, could only sit in his corner of the mat, hands folded, leaning forward as he always does. There were bigger hearts out on the mat, dressed in a brighter red, beating harder.