My wife loves the summer, my kids love the summer. I love when the summer ends. The end of summer symbolizes one thing: wrestling season is almost here.

If you are an avid reader of Lighthouse, it is likely that you recall that every other week it seemed that I was writing a press release announcing that another blue-chip recruit had committed to …

The Big Red wrestling team will add ten members to its roster as the class of 2014. The class has been recognized as one of the best in the country (third by WIN magazine, fourth by TheOpenMat.com and D1CollegeWrestling.com and eighth by Intermat). The group represents eight different weight classes and six states.

Rob Koll recaps the Big Red’s performance at the 2010 EIWA Championships.

Cornell powers through the first day of the EIWA championship as 8 of 10 Big Red wrestlers stormed through the quartfinal round.

Cornell earned All-Ivy accolades at a total of nine different weight classes. Eight earn first team honors for the 2009-2010 season. Lewnes and O’Connor named Co-Wrestlers of the year; Dake named rookie of the year.

This weekend we finished up the dual meet portion of our season by defeating Brown and Harvard. The victory over Harvard secured our eighth consecutive Ivy League title. The program’s Ivy League winning streak now stands at forty-three straight dual meet victories over Ancient Eight opponents and this year we outscored the rest of the league by a combined score of 204-19.

Rob Koll recaps the Big Red’s weekend performance against Penn and Princeton.

Now that we have wrestled through the most rigorous portion of the season it is nice to have a few “lighter” matches leading up the EIWA tournament. Out of twenty matches wrestled, we had only one wrestler lose a match.

What: #7 Cornell University vs. Hofstra
When: Saturday February 6th, 2010
Time: 5pm EST
Where: Ithaca, NY
Coverage: Live Video (Courtesy of Cornell Redcast)

What: #2 Iowa State vs. #7 Cornell University
When: Sunday January 31st, 2010
Time: 1pm EST
Where: Newman Arena
Coverage: Live Text (Courtesy of Light House Wrestling)/Live Video (Courtesy of Cornell Redcast)

Cornell had a full weekend of wrestling with Lehigh on Friday evening and the New York Intercollegiate Championships all day Saturday and Sunday. We tied #8 Lehigh 15-15 and won the NY States, crowning five champions.

Cornell head coach gives his mid term report on the Big Red Wrestling team with an in depth analysis of each weight class.

They practice scrambling at Cornell; this is a certainty. If the finals of the 2009 Southern Scuffle on the campus of UNC-Greensboro taught us nothing else, it is that Big Red wrestlers have made an …

It was several months ago that a Cornell University insider informed me that they felt extremely confident that they would land the services of 2009 NHSCA Junior National Champion, Billy George…Yesterday, speculation became fact when …

Sorry it took me an extra day to get this update out. We took the redeye back and I expected to write it on the plane flight back.

I was going to put this off until after the Body Bar but l figured I might as well get it over with. We lost a heartbreaker tonight. There were some absolutely amazing performances and an equal number of less than stellar performances. I will start with the positives.

Here are the results from the Binghamton Open. Most of our guys wrestled “unattached” which means they did not represent Cornell, and Cornell did not pay for any of their expenses.

At first glance, it might have seemed like a foregone conclusion that Evan Knight, a senior at Urbandale High School in Iowa, would end up donning a cardinal and gold Iowa State singlet….After all, his …

The No. 3 nationally ranked Cornell wrestling team has earned the top spot in EIWA Preseason rankings it was released this weekend. The Big Red has won the EIWA team title the past three seasons and will contend for its fourth-straight win in March. Seven Big Red wrestlers are ranked in the top six of their individual weight classes with four ranked first. Freshmen are not eligible to be ranked.

On Tuesday evening, it was confirmed that after weeks of speculation about which Ivy League institution would land his services, Blair Academy senior, Chris Villalonga, had given a verbal commitment to continue his academic and …

On Wednesday, InterMat broke the news that the #99 recruit in the land, Blair Academy’s Jesse Shanaman, had given a verbal commitment to Cornell University Head Coach, Rob Koll and his staff…In doing so, Shanaman become the second Bucs wrestler in the past week and a half to formally announce his collegiate plans. On October 4th, 2009 National Prep Champion, Max Huntley (who will wrestle on the Blair College team in 2010) revealed that he would continue his wrestling career at Missouri under the tutelage of Brian Smith….Remaining uncommitted from Jeff Buxton’s returning National Championship team are a pair of top-15 recruits in the persons of #3 Chris Villalonga (also rumored to be heavily considering Cornell) and #12 Mike Evans (a 2010 transfer who is believed to be down to a short list consisting of the University of Iowa and the aforementioned University of Missouri).

Marshall Peppelman was in seventh grade when he first started attending Rob Koll’s Cornell wrestling camps in the summer with his teammates. His team attended the camp every summer and Peppelman’s relationship grew with Koll …

It has been awhile since I last wrote, but that does not mean that nothing has been going on in the world of Big Red wrestling. We had to replace two assistant coaches as Cory Cooperman and Travis Lee have moved on. Cory accepted a coaching position closer to home at Rutgers, while Travis has decided to move to California to pursue a career in the biotechnology field. Cory has been a wonderful member of our Cornell wrestling family over the past three years, and he will undoubtedly make a significant impact with the Scarlet Knights.

Unfortunately we came up short on our goal of a national championship. However, I was extremely proud of the team’s performance in general. We demonstrated to the wrestling community that Cornell is a serious contender and not just a “flash in the pan”. As long as we continue to bring in quality young man and work hard and smart we have teams that will challenge for title. It may take some time, but we will eventually reach our goal of a national championship!

“Arising from the east may be the most prodigious group of red wrestlers since the fall of the Soviet Union — and the least likely. Cornell University, coming off its third straight victory in the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association tournament held this past weekend in Philadelphia, has the second-ranked wrestling team in the nation. Rarely has an East Coast team been ranked so high; for the Ivy League, it is unprecedented.”