Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 11 No. 2 | October 2018

T o get an indication of the quality of talent in the Virginia Tech wrestling program, one needs only to consider what transpired over the course of the past few months. A Virginia Tech wrestler won a gold medal at an international event. He accomplished this by wrestling a style unfamiliar to him (freestyle). And the kicker: he hasn’t even wrestled in a dual match for the Hokies yet. Mekhi Lewis, a redshirt freshman, dominated the competition at the Junior World Championships held in Slovakia in late September en route to a gold medal, giving the program its first international gold, and perhaps more importantly, serving as an example of the types of wrestlers that Tony Robie and his staff continue to develop. A longtime assistant, Robie took over the keys to the program in March of 2017 after Kevin Dresser left for Iowa State. Last year, he, along with top assistants Jared Frayer and Frank Molinaro and several others, molded a lineup that featured just two seniors and five first- time starters and won the ACC title—again. Then, the group went on to finish eighth at the NCAA Championships, which marked the program’s sixth consecutive top-10 finish. “Going into the season, we had so many new faces,” Robie said. “There was a little bit of uncertainty because we had five new guys stepping into the lineup. I knew what we had with David McFadden and Zack Zavatsky and Jared Haught. In a lot of other places, I didn’t know what we had, and then we had some changes in some places, some guys that didn’t return to the team. “I would say we probably exceeded my expectations overall, with some of the young guys developing well, and they were very consistent, which was nice.” With this season’s first match approaching, Robie—  recently awarded a contract extension through 2022-23—and his staff continue to take on a new set of challenges, albeit with a talented and more experienced team. He spent the offseason tackling the biggest challenge—replacing departed seniors Dennis Gustafson and Jared Haught, two ACC champions, and in the case of Haught, a three-time All-American and only the program’s second NCAA finalist. Haught, in particular, will be difficult to replace. He not only won, but he set the standard for work ethic and for a desire to improve. “Jared is the second NCAA finalist that we’ve ever had at Virginia Tech, so he’s not an easy guy to replace,” Robie admitted. “We knew what we were getting every time that Jared stepped on the mat. There are some points that we have to fill in there from the NCAA tournament. Whenever you get a guy to the NCAA finals, he’s scoring a heckuva lot of points for you. “Obviously with Mekhi coming into the lineup, we anticipate big things coming from Mekhi, and I think that a lot of our younger guys have matured a year, with Kyle Norstrem at 125 [pounds] and Ryan Blees at 149 and B.C. LaPrade at 157 … I think they’ve improved, and then we were able to secure some transfers that are really going to help us.” With that said, here is a closer look at each weight class, as the Hokies get set to open the season: 125 pounds Redshirt sophomore Kyle Norstrem returns after a difficult redshirt freshman campaign in which he went 12-16. Yet Norstrem earned an at-large bid to the NCAA Championships, and he won a match there. He will be challenged by Joey Prata, another redshirt sophomore. “On paper, Kyle is the frontrunner,” Robie said. “I think Joey Prata would be a guy that could challenge Kyle. He’s coming off two years of injuries, so it’s hard to gauge where he is exactly. But I’ve seen some improvement in Kyle. I’ve seen a lot of things that I’ve liked out of Kyle Norstrem in the offseason. I do feel like he’s committed himself to getting better from a technical standpoint, and you can see that. Watching him in the wrestling room, he’s definitely made improvements. I expect to see Kyle have a better year and have more success than he had last year.” 133 pounds Gustafson closed his career last season by going 24-9, winning the ACC title for the second time in his career and qualifying for the NCAA Championships, where he won a match. Now, the Hokies need to find his replacement, and Robie likes what he sees from Korbin Myers, a redshirt junior who transferred from Edinboro over the summer. Myers was a two-time Eastern Wrestling League champion and a two-time NCAA qualifier while at Edinboro. “Korbin has established himself at this weight class,” Robie said. “He is the clear-cut favorite. I think he’s going to turn a lot of heads this year. I’m excited to watch him wrestle. He’s really athletic. He’s good in every single position, and he can score points a lot of different ways. He’s a more athletic guy than I anticipated, which I’m pleased about. He and Dennis were similar wrestlers, but they wrestled twice last year and they were both very close matches [Myers won both], so he’s going to step in nicely and pick up where Dennis left off.” 141 pounds At the ACC Championships, Brent Moore pulled off the biggest upset of the tournament, knocking off top seed and two-time ACC champion Kevin Jack of NC State to win the title. The redshirt sophomore went 17-10 on the year, but he will not be wrestling this year because of a neck injury that required surgery. The injury thus left Robie scrambling for a replacement. Mitch Moore, a true freshman and Brent’s brother, went into fall workouts as the favorite. Others in the mix include redshirt freshmen Josh Baier and Caden Darber and sophomore Josh Wyland. 40 Inside Hokie Sports