Life as a Chippewa - from Ben Bennett's perspective
The following was written by former Rockford 3x state champ, Senior National Champ, and Junior Freestyle Champ Ben Bennett. Bennett is currently a true freshman at Central Michigan University.
I have been in college for almost a month so far and I
would have to say it’s not nearly as bad as I thought it may
be. Personally, I don’t think the dorms are as bad as some
people make them out to be. I am rooming with Scotti
Sentes, Christian Cullinan, and another guy who is not on
the team. All four of us get along real well, which makes
things easier. School has actually been pretty good thus far.
The most difficult part is managing your time and making
sure you have everything laid out for the upcoming week.
This is a good thing to do since we are so busy with working
out, class, and studying. Being organized always helps.
First off, my classes are not all that bad or at least
not yet. As long as I go to class and do my work, getting
good grades should not be that hard. If you chose to skip
class often, you will probably have some trouble getting by.
Coach also makes us attend study table for eight hours a
week, this is where I do most of my work. It is a good thing
to have because it makes you do some work, if you have to go
you might as well do a little work and get it done. Communication with your professors is another important thing to do, get to know them and help them get to know you. If something comes up, you miss class for some reason or for
wrestling you need to be able to communicate with them, so having a relationship with them already will be very helpful. The main thing here is to go to class and do your work. This will take care of many unneeded issues. You are always going to have to study for exams, but if you did all your work previously you should know the content pretty well.
Now on to workouts, practices have been going pretty well so far. We lift three days a week, wrestle about five days a week, and we do some running in there too. In the last couple of weeks I have been improving a lot, I go into each practice looking to become better and build on at least one thing. One thing I would stress to high school wrestlers, only because this is what I did, is to scramble less and sprawl more. In college scrambling works only every once in a while, while sprawling is far more efficient. Bottom is also another very import spot to work on; if you can get out quick it will save you a lot of trouble. There are a ton of tough guys in the room so always having a partner who will push you or beat up on you a little is never an issue, which is very nice. The lifting is awesome,
Christian Sinnott is our strength coach and he puts us through some tough lifts. We have a
very talented freshman class this year; there are fourteen of us to be exact. We all get only
pretty well too which is cool. I think our class, along with the classes before us, will be able
to accomplish a lot of good thing in the near feature.
Overall, I am extremely happy with my choice to attend CMU. Coach Borrelli is an
outstanding coach and I can’t wait to wrestle for him. Coach DiSalvo does a lot too and is
awesome to have here working with us. Along with those two, we have pretty much all the
guys who graduated last year in the room with us this year. They are all very knowledgeable
and help us out when we need it, but they also push us at the same time.
Hopefully I will see everyone coming to support the Chippewas this winter. I believe we are going to have some
pretty good matches here at CMU this year so come check us out. Thank you!
-Ben Bennett
Michigan Grappler would like to thank Ben for taking time out his busy schedule to take part in the Welcome to College Blog series and wish him luck in his college career.
