Virginia Tech wrestling head coach Tony Robie and men’s basketball head coach Mike Young joined Zach Mackey and Mike Burnop on Thursday’s edition of Tech Talk Live.
On the mat, the Hokies are 5-2 (1-0) and beat No. 14 Pitt 18-15 last week. They host Appalachian State at the Center for the Arts on Friday night (7 p.m. ET, ACCNX).
On the hardwood, Tech men’s basketball is coming off a heartbreaking loss to SMU as Boopie Miller hit a half-court buzzer-beater. It’s back in Cassell Coliseum on Saturday vs. Notre Dame (noon ET, ACCN).
Tony Robie
Coach, great to have you. Thanks for coming out.
Thanks, Zach. I appreciate you guys having me on. It’s always good to get on and talk a little bit of Virginia Tech wrestling.
How does the room feel as you get into the heart of your season?
Really good. I feel as good about this group collectively as I have in a long time. We have some guys that are redshirting this year who are really good and have already had a huge impact on our program. We don’t have everybody out there every time we wrestle. In our sport now, if you’re a freshman, you can wrestle five dates and maintain your redshirt. We’re doing that with a few of our guys here and there. Caleb Henson is redshirting this year. Overall, the culture of our program, along with our freshman class, is incredible. They’re setting the tone for the rest of the team.
We’ve got a really good balance of young guys with incredible desire and talent combined with veterans like Eddie Ventresca, Tom Crook, Caleb Henson, Jimmy Mullen, Sonny Sasso. It’s exciting times for our program this year. When you look into the future, our best days are in front of us, and we’ve done some good things up to this point. It’s really exciting and it’s fun. Coaching and working with these guys is really fun for me. I’ve got a great staff that does a lot of the heavy lifting with the wrestling part of it. It’s going well.
Walk us through the process that led to redshirting Caleb Henson.
It was something that we had thought about. Eddie Ventresca, our 125, who’s a two-time All-American, he’s ranked third in the country and he lost in the semifinals in overtime last year. He had beaten the wrestler from NC State, who won the nationals, he’s 3-0 against him in his career. He was granted another year of eligibility. When that happened, we started looking at what we have coming in, what we have coming back next year. Caleb would’ve been one of the few guys that would have graduated this year.
When you look at next year’s team and what it could be, and then adding Caleb to that, it really just lines up for us to have a special year. That being said, we feel really good about the team that we have this year. We feel that we can accomplish great things. That is what ultimately played into our decision and our thought process early on. Then you get the big commitment from Bo Bassett, who signed with us in November. You throw him in this mix with other incoming guys, you feel like you have an opportunity next year to have our best team that we’ve ever had. With that comes the possibility of accomplishing some great things and hopefully bringing a trophy back from the NCAA championships.
What has Caleb’s mindset been with the redshirt? How do you keep him sharp?
I think Caleb’s a special kid in terms of how he processes and approaches things. His intent, his goal, is always to get better at wrestling. I think that’s how he’s approaching this year. Caleb has aspirations beyond college wrestling. He wants to make a world team in freestyle wrestling, make an Olympic team, win gold medals. He’s really dedicated this year. He’s not competing in folkstyle wrestling. People that know wrestling know that there’s a slight difference in the styles between what we do on the mat and what they do for international wrestling. Caleb is really focused on improving his freestyle wrestling skills. He was recently out at the Olympic Training Center for a World Team Training Camp with the best wrestlers in the country, him and Bryce Andonian. He’s going to Croatia to compete in a ranking series event. He’ll see some of the best wrestlers in the world at that thing.
He’s really trying to take this year to focus on that. He’ll come back to folkstyle wrestling next year, win another NCAA championship, and then he’ll shift back to freestyle to focus on the 2028 Olympic Games. It was ultimately Caleb’s decision. We talked about it and we discussed the pros and the cons and we left it up to him. Caleb’s a team guy and Virginia Tech wrestling is really important to him. His legacy extends far beyond his own personal accomplishments. He’s looking at what we can do as a team next year. Caleb’s not a hard guy to motivate. He’s essentially an extension of our coaching staff from a wrestling standpoint. The kid is incredible, his mind is incredible. His understanding of the sport of wrestling and his ability to communicate that and teach that to our guys has been critical in the development of some of our young true freshmen that you’re seeing have some success this year.
Talk about your staff a little bit. You have Sam Latona as your recruiting coordinator.
We do. I think continuity is incredibly important in the success of any program. That was one of the things with Coach [Frank] Beamer that made them so successful for so many years. We have two associate head coaches. Jared Frayer came in with me when I got hired in the spring of 2017. Jared was my first hire at Virginia Tech, and he was eventually promoted to associate head coach. He’s been with us for eight or nine years at this point. He’s been critical in our success. He’s a great recruiter. He played an instrumental role in Caleb Henson’s and Bryce Andonian’s development.
We also hired Zach Tanelli. Zach was the head wrestling coach at Columbia University prior to coming to Virginia Tech. Zach has been a great addition for us. Somebody who has head coaching experience and can really do every part of the job. Essentially, we have three guys on our staff who have the ability or have been head coaches. It takes a lot off my plate and allows me the opportunity to seek those guys as counsel and advice. They’re deeply involved in the decision-making process. Zach has been great in that sense. From a technical standpoint, he’s really good and he’s helped a lot of our guys develop in their technical and strategic part of wrestling. That’s really important in winning wrestling matches. As I’ve gotten older, the role and the rules have changed in college sports. I’m doing a lot more of the general manager, fundraising, speaking, recruiting. A lot of the wrestling stuff falls on those other coaches.
Jared Haught is our fourth coach on the staff. Jared was a three-time NCAA All-American at Virginia Tech. I believe he was the second NCAA finalist that Virginia Tech ever had. He lost a heartbreaker in overtime in the finals in Cleveland in 2017 or 2018. Sam Latona was recently brought on as the recruiting coordinator. He’s also a Virginia Tech grad. I also feel like it’s really important to have coaches and staff that came through your program and understand the way that we do things and the way we want to do things. They also understand the standard and the expectations. They have an infection for Virginia Tech because they went to school here. They love this place, they love the program.
I feel great about our staff. We have Bryce Andonian around. We call him a resident athlete. He’s trained to try to make the World and Olympic teams, kind of like Caleb is going to do. The hope is to keep Caleb around next year. In wrestling, the staff continues to grow and get bigger. We need all the pieces of the puzzle to do what we do and accomplish what we’re capable of accomplishing here.
You guys have a match this week against Appalachian State at the Center for the Arts. Arts Center. A few times you’ve done this now, right?
We have. I couldn’t tell you how many years, but it’s been over a decade that we’ve been going over there. It’s a really cool and unique event. It’s something that our athletes and fans enjoy. It sells out every year and sold out this year about as quick as it ever has. There’s a lot of excitement around that match. It also creates an opportunity for us to bring in some fans that wouldn’t typically go to a wrestling match at Cassell Coliseum, so we get to introduce people to the sport of wrestling that otherwise wouldn’t be exposed to it. A lot of times, I think those people enjoy it and become fans. We’re excited. App State is a good test, they’ve got a really scrappy team. Their coach does a fantastic job. We’ve got to be ready to wrestle.
What are the warmups like there with the curtains and everything? That’s got to be unique, right?
A little bit. Your procedures and process changes slightly. We still do our warmups over in our wrestling room in Cassell. Then we go over to the Center for the Arts prior to that. Everything just shifts up about half an hour. It gives us an opportunity to get our guys over there for skin checks and weigh-ins, which happen two hours before the match. The match starts at seven, so that will take place at five at the Center for the Arts. We’ve done it so many times now, we’re pretty used to it. To the guys who have never competed over there, it is a little bit different. You’re on a stage.
Maybe a little like the national finals?
A little bit. It is. The unique thing about the venue is that it’s a theatre design, so you can hear everything. As a coach, I’ve got to be real careful what I say. When it’s quiet, it’s really quiet. When it’s loud, it’s really loud. Hopefully it’s really loud tomorrow and our fans enjoy it. It’s definitely unique.
What’s the capacity there? Can you share some of the logistics of putting that on?
The capacity is right around 1,000. The only thing I don’t like about wrestling over there is our attendance numbers. It brings the average down, but we’ll sell it out. We’ll have 1,000 there. We get really good crowds in Cassell [Coliseum], it’s not uncommon for us to get around 5,000 people or more. I think those crowds will just continue to grow. That’s the only downside. In terms of the process, we went over today and our guys who weren’t competing were helping the coaches as we just cart everything over. In wrestling, you just get used to doing everything yourself. We don’t ever rely on a lot of help. Our director of operations, Tucker Davidson, rents a truck, we load up the mat, take it off, roll it out and tape it. The whole process takes about 30 minutes.
What’s your philosophy with scheduling? You face Oklahoma State pretty late in the year.
It’s a tough schedule. One of my goals is to always have a marquee out-of-conference match at home. I think it’s been really important in the development of our fan base. Our fans want to see us wrestle teams like Oklahoma State or Ohio State and some of these high-end teams. Oklahoma State is as good as anybody, with the exception of Penn State right now. They’ve really got it rolling. They’ve made huge investments into their program. They’ve got some good young guys who wrestle in an exciting style. We’re excited for that.We went to Stillwater, Oklahoma, last year and it didn’t go great for us. We’re excited for that challenge and we’re excited to see where we stand. One of the things that we try to do and accomplish with our schedule is to wrestle good competition. If there are weaknesses that we might have, we want to get those exposed early in the season. It’s the end of the year that matters in our sport the most. If we can get exposed during the year, that’s okay because it gives us time to fix things.
You guys have been recruiting incredibly well.
We’re excited. When you look at the future, it’s incredibly bright. There’s still a lot of work to do and a lot that goes into it. We were able to get a commitment from and then sign Bo Bassett in November. Bo is certainly one of the best high school wrestlers of all time. He has an incredible social media following. If you follow wrestling at all, you know who Bo Bassett is. He’s a very mature and well-spoken guy. He’s got 200-something thousand Instagram followers. The kid is incredible. His reach goes far beyond the casual wrestling fan. We’re excited about bringing Bo into the program for a lot of reasons. He’s a great young man. He brings a lot in terms of wins and how he’s going to perform, but he brings a lot off the mat too. He’s going to be a person that people gravitate to and want to watch. We’re excited about that part of it too. It helps build our fan base and our donor base.
How much has NIL changed the sport of wrestling at Virginia Tech?
Significantly. I think wrestling is way further advanced than a lot of Olympic sports. Wrestling fans are very passionate about their programs, and it’s no different here at Virginia Tech. We’ve got a great fan base and a great donor base. A lot of really loyal and really successful people. We have an organization called the Southeast Regional Training Center. For us, it’s essentially the Hokie Way or Triumph that those are to football at Virginia Tech. It’s something that allows us to do a lot of NIL stuff with our student-athletes. It’s allowed us to be competitive and it’s helped us. One of the things that was challenging at Virginia Tech before the scholarship changes and NIL, we didn’t have a lot of institutional financial aid. We were essentially operating on 9.9 scholarships. For a lot of schools, you’d go there for a year and get in-state tuition. They’d have incredible packages for need-based financial aid that you could get. Our 9.9 was basically competing against 20 scholarships in that way. We’ve been able to even the playing field and do well in that area. In the sport of wrestling, there’s a lot going on.
You mentioned having Oklahoma State in the middle of February. Right before that, you have a ranked match against North Carolina. What’s it like for your team to have that turnaround?
It’s something we’re accustomed to. I like it and I think it’s good to play twice in one weekend, especially that time of year. You go to the NCAA championships, that’s a three-day event where you have to compete and weigh in three days in a row against some of the best guys in the country. You could wrestle anywhere from five to seven or eight matchups depending on where you finish. For our guys, it’s a good trial run in terms of keeping their weight down and being able to make weight multiple times over the course of a weekend. I think there’s a lot of positives in that part of it. Our guys have become accustomed to that. Emotionally, you’ve got to be able to get back up. You have a big rivalry match on Friday and then you turn around on Sunday to play Oklahoma State. Our guys have got to be ready to go. It’s our job as coaches to make sure these guys are emotionally ready to go and compete.
What’s it like to get to host the ACC Tournament this year?
It’s great. I think it’s great for our fans as much as anything. It’s nice to be home and not have to travel. We travelled a lot in the early parts of the year. We just went to Pittsburgh, we also go to NC State and UVa. We don’t travel again until the NCAA championships, which are in Cleveland this year. That part is nice. You get to rest and sleep in your own bed, use your own facilities. There’s some advantages to having that event at home. At the end of the day, you still have to go out and wrestle, and it is what it is. Our fans won’t have to travel and they’ll get to watch us at home.
How has the sport changed from when you were here to now?
It’s changed a lot. I graduated college in 1997, high school in 1992. Things weren’t as special. The sport has evolved so much in so many different ways. The internet alone changed everything from a technical standpoint. There’s so much access to high-level technique now at the tip of your fingers. The first time I attended a college wrestling match, I was competing in it. I had never even gone to one or watched one. Athletically, kids are so much more specialized and the training is so advanced. High school kids are training with college kids and making world teams now. There were two high school kids on the Team USA World Team.
It’s come a long way. It’s way further advanced from a technical and athletic standpoint in a lot of different ways. Kids are spending a lot more hours and have access to way better coaching. Over the course of the last 20 years when I was first at Virginia Tech, we’ve seen a lot of those same changes within our sport. The NIL aspect has changed things significantly as well. Just like every other sport and industry, things evolve and change. You either adapt or you go find something else to do. We’re trying to adapt as much as possible.
What’s Mekhi Lewis up to now?
Mekhi Lewis is in Northern Virginia. He’s in the process of becoming a firefighter, from what I understand. I think that’s a great path for Mekhi. From what I understand, he’ll be in town the weekend that we wrestle Oklahoma State. We’re in the process of putting something together with Mekhi and Caleb when he’s in town. That’s still in the works, but I think it’s something that people will appreciate. Mekhi did a lot for our program. He’s an outstanding person.
