How Nathan Desmond (HS) Teched Liam Cronin (NCAA All-American)

This past weekend Nathan Desmond, a high school senior, upset Liam Cronin, who was an NCAA semi-finalist and all-american just two years ago. I’ve done a video on Nathan before, he is my nephew, I’ve known him his whole life, coached him until he hit high school. The last video I made on one of Nate’s matches he beat the current #1 in the country Leo Deluca in the finals of Prep Nationals, now I get to cover him again beating someone much older, much more seasoned. I really can’t wait until Nate hits college. Though he’s usually top 5 in the country, I still think he’s flying under the radar a little and is going to shock a lot of people in the next few years.

First period starts off pretty normal, some light hand fighting, both wrestlers warming up to the match, testing reactions and whatnot. At around the 2 minute twenty mark Nate gets a push out point. Right off the whistle, Liam posts with his right hand and so Nate immediately pops up that arm and goes for a low single on the exposed right foot. This pop-up is so simple yet can be so incredibly effective on good wrestlers. A lot of times wrestlers, regardless of skill, tend to post a lot with their hands to keep some distance, maintain contact, have a better feel for the motion of their opponent, or just purely out of habit. It can backfire on you though, it’s why lefty sweep singles tend to work well if your opponent is a right lead and likes to reach with his right hand. Liam is reaching with his right hand and is a left foot lead, which is a lot safer, but still it’s not perfect. The advice here is to close the gap a little more before reaching, or if you have to reach, reach for a wrist, arm drag, or russian tie up. Those are just better options because they don’t give up unnecessary risks. Ideally, you shouldn’t reach to the head when you’re at a distance. Most likely, this was done just out of habit, and if you’ve been doing that your entire wrestling career, it’s not easy to fix. I had the same issue.

As for Nate’s point of view, it was a really well timed shot, and he was most likely waiting for Liam to reach again so he could poke at that ankle. You would want to make contact with the elbow when popping the arm up as it keeps the arm controlled better, elbows bend and so if you’re lower than the elbow a lot of times the arm will bend and fall and your pop up won’t do much of anything. Having said that, popping the arm up is not always the easiest thing to catch, you have to actually make contact with your hand while it’s shaped in an L. Like hitting a baseball, your aim isn’t always going to be amazing. So, his pop-up wasn’t perfect, but it did enough to give Nate enough time to get to the ankle, which is key here. At this level, you’re just looking for little, tiny advantages.

Nate pulls the ankle in and straightens the leg out, and then starts to come up with it. Now, at this point, you can use try to use your right shoulder to apply pressure downwards to push your opponent to his butt so you can grab a quick double, this would most likely turn into a leg lace of sorts as your opponent tries to belly out. You can also try to get a little distance, put your head into the right leg, above the knee, push him to his butt to a tripod, circle left to the double, which will accomplish a similar thing. Pulling the leg up to a high single tends to be one of the easier finishes as it’s super difficult to defend. Keeping things on the mat may not be the best idea in freestyle, whereas in folkstyle scrambles on the mat are much more forgiving if you know what you’re doing.

As far as Liam is concerned, he’s in a lot of trouble. Shin whizzer’s aren’t super popular in freestyle, and Nate knows his way around them plenty. You could use the whizzer to pull things down to the mat and then try to kick out or circle over the head to convert to a crotch lock and crack down like Yianni would do. You could try to kick away, but I don’t know how refs call that action in freestyle. That could easily be a caution point, you’ll have to help me out with that one. Either way, running away here tends to give a good opponent a takedown, unless your name is Kyle Dake, so I wouldn’t recommend it. Nate picks the leg up and runs Liam out of bounds for an easy step out point. It looks like he’s trying to do a back trip, but a step out is fine here. Score is 1-0 Nate.

52 seconds left in the first, Liam has that underhook on the left, he’s been doing this a lot this match, and Nate has been using a possible fireman’s carry to escape from the position. A lot of times in college and beyond wrestlers will get a solid underhook on you and they start pulling pressure up in a way where you’re either forced to pull your arm up and try to run away from it, which your opponent could charge and use that motion to get something, or you can duck your head under the arm for a fireman’s carry, which may or may not land, but it’s pretty low risk. You either get the leg and convert to a better shot, or you let go of the leg, keep the overhook you have, circle away and do what’s known as an arm spin, then you can maybe look for drag to a reattack. Nate has an underhook with his right, but his overhook is hooking over top of his underhook. We used to call this a screw lock, and it was done with you holding the head with your left arm, but this is a little different. It’s probably a lock he uses to stall the action a bit and get a clean start. However, Nate does something pretty interesting that I’ve never seen before, he snaps the overhook down, limps his right arm out, hooks under the arm with his left arm to go behind. Liam reacts well and faces Nate so Nate wisely drops down to a double, forcing Liam to his butt. This is a rough position for the defensive guy, who falls into a pretty easy leg lace. Nate wraps both legs up and laces Liam for 2 sets of exposure, bringing the score to 7-0.

When you have an underhook it’s a good idea to keep your other arm ready to downblock a shot like this. If you pull pressure up consistently and you have good control you’re almost forcing them to shoot on you. So with that knowledge, if you keep your right arm in the vicinity to down block you can easily catch the shot coming in which will net yourself an easy front headlock. Now, it’s not an amazing front headlock, your underhook keeps you dug into it pretty deep, but it’s still better than letting them escape out of it entirely or you giving up a shot from here.

Couple seconds into the second period, Liam is posting with that right arm yet again, this time Nate grabs the wrist, posts it down a bit, which catches Liam off guard as Nate penetrates to a nice double. Unfortunately, his position with the double is a little off. Nate runs the pressure forward, probably trying to get feet to back which would be 4 and would close out the match, but Liam is able to peddle his feet backwards, stabilize, and so only gives up a push out point. This is common, usually a really good wrestler will be able to keep up with this motion, especially if the offensive guy isn’t in great position as they’re running. Notice Nate’s hips are back and his head is down a little. If his hips were in more and his head was up he’d be able to control the situation better, get more of a lift, and Liam wouldn’t be able to stay in a decent position. Liam is pushing on Nate’s leg with his left foot which is always annoying and it makes it easier for him to stay stable. As Nate, you can do another penetration step to get a little bit of an angle and get your hips lower. The rule of thumb with a double is to not run the guy backwards like this, but to try to turn the corner so you can drive them to the side, because it’s a lot more difficult to sidestep your feet than it is to peddle backwards. Score is 8-0 Nate.

2 minutes, twenty seconds left, Liam has that underhook yet again, Nate does the fireman’s carry attempt, and this time he’s able to limp his right arm free as he goes under, keeps his head up. He catches 2 legs as Liam tries to go body lock for a back exposure attempt but isn’t able to get much out of it. Nate stays safe and gets his 2 points and closes out the match with a hard fought tech fall, 10-0. So, the reason why this fireman’s carry worked better this time than the last couple times he tried it this match is partly due to his positioning, his head was in a good spot, but it’s mostly due to the lack of control Liam had with his underhook. Nate had a lot more room to limp his arm out this time and was able to slip out of the underhook easier. That could just be because things tend to be more slippery towards the end of the match due to sweat. Sweat definitely does play a factor here.

Anyways, Nathan Desmond gets a sweet 10-0 tech fall against an All American and he’s not even out of high school yet. Gotta love it.