After a two-day demolition of the Greco-Roman field at the 16U National Duals, Minnesota coach Adam Thronson shared a simple secret to his state’s success in the sport — experimentation. 

No, the Minnesotans aren’t reinventing the Greco wheel with anything cutting edge, according to Thronson. 

They’re just giving the discipline a shot and their commitment is making Minnesota a national Greco hotbed. 

“We have four regional training sites throughout Minnesota,” Thronson said. “We have amazing clubs in Minnesota that are always pushing for going to the Greco tournament on Friday and the freestyle tournament on Saturday. It’s just important to give things a try. I don’t think Minnesota is doing anything special. We just stick to a system and we want kids to give this a try. It’s working toward building kids’ confidence from a young age and when they do that we can come to a tournament like this and have a lot of success.”

The last two days on the outskirts of Indianapolis were more than just a success for the Minnesota Blue squad. It was a complete and total destruction of everything in its path to the title. 

Minnesota Blue went 92-27 in individual matches and won at least 12 bouts in each of its seven duals. It capped the weekend by taking the first four matches and sweeping the last four during a 48-26 victory against Oklahoma Blue in the championship dual. 

“All respect to Oklahoma,” Thronson said. “They have a great team. They’re building Greco so it was awesome to see them in the finals.”

Oklahoma reached the finals by toppling perennial power Illinois 37-35 in a dual that tipped on 94-pounder Max McDaniel’s 8-2 victory against Kalani Khiev in the final match. 

“We fought Illinois for several years and we’ve been catching up with them,” said Oklahoma coach Tony Cook, whose state is starting to develop a reputation for its Greco prowess to go along with its rich freestyle tradition. 

“We’re the state of John Smith. We’re freestyle guys but a message that’s being spread by a lot of the coaches in the state right now is you don’t necessarily have to be a great Greco-Roman wrestler, but you need to wrestle Greco-Roman. The kids are buying into that and they’re starting to enjoy it and have fun with it.”

Oklahoma, though, ran into a buzzsaw in the finals. 

Minnesota kicked off the dual with wins from Jack Nelson (106), Logan Swensen (113), Alex Braun (120) and Landon Robideau (126) and tacked on pivotal victories in the middle at 145 and 160. 

Kyler Wong tossed Layton Schneider for a first-period fall at 145 after a lengthy over-under tango and Jed Wester dug himself out of an 8-2 deficit and beat K.J. Evans 17-12 at 160. 

Minnesota had an even bigger rally later in the dual. Erik McCown raced out to an 8-0 lead against Soren Herzog at 195 before Herzog ran off 18 straight points, finishing the match with a flurry of gutwrench turns. 

“We talk about this with our guys — you’re never out of a match,” Thronson said. “We have a lot of confidence in our gutwrench and if we can get on top of people we feel like we’ll be able to bring ourselves back into the match. The thing in that situation was to stay calm, go back to your tie-ups, make sure you have a chance to control and hopefully get a passive or get a takedown and get on top. That’s the biggest thing. We tell our guys to believe in our gutwrench, believe in your tie-ups and you’ll be able to come back — even in the biggest of deficits.”