The Iowa Hawkeyes are coming off a big recruiting weekend which saw nine wrestlers take their official visit to the university – including seven wrestlers ranked at their weight classes according to Flowrestling. One of those wrestlers was Connecticut’s Anthony Falbo, who took the time to speak with IAwrestle about his visit.
“I thought it was pretty awesome coming out,” Falbo told IAwrestle, “Watching the practice I saw they were really intense and all the guys are really competitive. I thought that was pretty awesome.”
To start at the beginning of this story, we have to go back to Falbo’s middle school days, when Falbo had his first encounter with Iowa wrestling, “I have a good background on Iowa. When I was in eighth grade Terry and Nelson Brands came down and did a clinic at Sandy Hook,” Falbo said, “I went back pretty far with Terry, and I like the coaching style and mentality. Really just the success that they had. My goal is to be an NCAA champ and I have Olympic and World aspirations after that and I thought that was one of the coaches that would really make me better. I know I would learn a lot from them.”
Since then Falbo has been in contact on and off with the university, including connecting at Fargo this summer, “I have been in contact with coach Brands really since my freshman year, we’ve been on and off. I saw him up at Fargo and I told him I was really interested and really to be a Hawkeye. We really have been back and forth.”
Ranked #9 at 182 pounds by Flowrestling Falbo said that he was impressed with the work ethic of the upper-weights at Iowa, “I saw that they were attacking and they really kept pushing the pace, which is what I like to do. I just really like the style that they wrestle. They just keep pressuring forward and they never really break.”
Overall the visit was astonishing for Falbo from the facilities to the team chemistry, “I thought it was a pretty eye-opening experience for me. Just seeing the facility that they have was really nice. The coaches are really involved at practice, I noticed. Seeing Carver was really awesome too, being able to wrestle in there is pretty incredible. I really like the facilities there. Spending time with the team, I thought they were really nice and I felt like I would fit in pretty well with them.”
Falbo is also currently considering North Carolina and Purdue in addition to Iowa.