The Southern Scuffle is BACK!!!

This wrestling season has been a delight so far! The Journeyman Collegiate Duals were awesome, Midlands being canceled only to turn into two other tournaments, and as we begin the new year we get the Southern Scuffle back. This has turned into one of the bright spots of the year, and historically has had some awesome battles in the past. This year in Chattanooga we’ll have 30 awesome programs battling for supremacy and plenty more awesome matchups to look forward to. In the past we’ve gotten James Green versus Jason Nolf, we’ve gotten Vincenzo Joseph versus Shane Griffith, and I trust we’ll get to watch history being made this year as well. In the final days before the new year, I was able to catch up with Kyle Ruschell, UTC Head Coach. Here we talk about the Southern Scuffle and everything that goes into it.

Me: Southern Scuffle coming up, you guys are hosting on January 1st and 2nd, broadcast on Flowrestling. You’ve got 30 pretty awesome teams coming in. Let’s get right to it, with this being a full season again, what are you most excited for with this season in general.

Coach Kyle Ruschell; It’s pretty straight forward with it being a November to March season. Having these open tournaments is huge and especially with the guys getting that year back. We get to see a lot of guys actually compete. That Freshman class last year was basically a free year, and now with these open tournaments we get to see them compete at big tournaments like the Southern Scuffle with National Caliber guys.

Yeah, and specifically with this tournament. What is it about this tournament, being able to host it again, that has you most excited?

It’s just great for our community more than anything for us. We have a great following, North Georgia, Chattanooga area, all of Tennessee, pretty much all of the Southeast. They love their wrestling and this gives them a great view of getting people to Chattanooga, seeing what we’re about, and more importantly seeing great wrestling.

I wanted to go a little bit behind the scenes. My frame of reference with this was helping to set up the Ann Arbor Pioneer Novice Tournament at my High School, but what goes into getting this whole event set up from the coaching staff and wrestlers?

Our Administration has done a great job. Since Heath (Eslinger) left, they have taken over a lot of the little details as far as lanyards, payments, the schedule, and all of that type of stuff. My role has pretty much just been to make sure the teams get here, that we get a good team base, and then rolling out the mats. We have somebody who comes in with these blank black mats, and then he comes in afterwards and puts the circles down. It’s all of our guys who roll them out, so we have a little skin in the game for our athletes, but most of it is just our administration. We couldn’t be more thankful for them to take that over so all I have to do is coach. My wife does the hospitality room for the coaches and workers, but other than that our Administration is doing it all.

Did you compete in the Southern Scuffle when you were competing at Wisconsin?

I didn’t. For my first two years they had the Lonestar Duals down in Texas, so that’s where we went, then my Junior and Senior year we went to Midlands. Midlands only being two and a half hours away, and also I don’t remember the Scuffle being as big as it was until around 2014. That’s when I feel you’d get teams like Penn State going and everything like that. Then since it’s been brought to Chattanooga they have taken it up another level and made it feel like a National Tournament. Our Administration has done such a good job with playing to that ‘Hey, let’s be the most like the NCAA Tournament, before the NCAA Tournament’. We have a big jumbotron that does a huge countdown before each round, we have an announcers, and the scoreboard up on the jumbotron throughout the weekend. They take pride in that, and it’s something special. Being at all those other tournaments, this one is legitimately the closest thing to it (The NCAA Tournament).

Do you have a favorite moment or a favorite match coaching in this tournament?

I have only gotten to coach in it, I guess it was twice, but it feels like once because of the COVID year. I would say off the top of my head, Alonzo Allen, he was in the round of twelve (The Bloodround!) my first year. I don’t remember who he beat (it was our friend Gabriel Townsell aka Seven), but it was overtime and going back and forth. Our community was there, it was the second day, and they were supporting us. They got really loud when Zo was battling. It was something special for him, and for our whole team as well to see him knock off a ranked guy in that kind of high pressure situation. It made him really believe that he belonged on that National level.

Obviously I wanted to talk about some of the guys you have competing this year as well. I’ve always been a Weston Wichman fan, Fabian Gutierez, and defending SoCon Champ - Andrew Nicholson. How’s he doing, is he healthy right now?

He’s coming through. He has wrestled two matches so far, the last two weekends we got him one match. We put him right to the wolves wrestling two high ranked opponents wrestling Braunagel and Peyton Hall from West Virginia. Both of those guys are top notch guys, so we are looking to get him back on track. He was coming through a little bit of an injury, but hopefully he’ll be back with nothing holding him back.

One of the guys I’ve been impressed with so far this season is Braydon Palmer. He has looked really really good, and had some good wins recently against West Virginia and Cleveland State.

Yeah, he pinned the West Virginia wrestler, and he majored the wrestler from Cleveland State. Our lightweights, 157 down, are pretty tough. Our upper weights need to step it up, but yeah, Braydon he can score in different positions. He’s hard to take down and he’s pretty good on top. He’s not an easy out for anybody, so I’m excited to get that ball rolling, and keep that ball rolling through the Scuffle, and see what he can do. Same with all of those light weight guys.

Awesome, well obviously we’ll make sure we can tune in and promote this tournament and the schedule ahead. After this you jump right into the Virginia Duals before the SoCon schedule starts. You’re certainly making sure that these guys are getting a lot of good matches in.

Yeah, looking at our schedule we’ll have 3 Big Ten teams on our schedule. I don’t know the last time that’s happened. We wrestle Rutgers, Illinois, and Maryland, and we keep putting these guys feet to the fire and letting them know that we are Division 1 wrestlers, and the expectation is that we are going to go wrestle anybody because you have to in order to get on that podium in March. We need to go do that before we jump into our SoCon schedule to be prepared to step on that mat in March.

Then you finish out the year with Indiana.

That’s right! Then that makes it 4 Big Ten teams on the schedule! Yeah, they are a good one to finish off the year with another good team to see where we are at before the conference championship and to make a couple of adjustments in those two weeks. Indiana is going to wrestle us pretty darn hard. Our wrestlers match up with them, where they are ranked we are ranked, so its going to be a good test for all of our guys.

Then you cap off the year up here in Detroit!

Coach Ruschell is always fun to catch up with because he’s so enthusiastic about his program. If you missed him on our podcast last season, then I recommend you listen back to that episode (episode #311). Another thing that really stood out to me in this interview was just how supportive the Administration is with this event. While watching The Southern Scuffle next week, make sure you look around at the set up and appreciate what goes into putting these great events on. As I mentioned on the podcast, I believe that this is the best that the sport of wrestling has been in for a long time. Let’s make sure we continue appreciate and support events like this. Make sure you tune in on Flowrestling January 1st and 2nd.