First and foremost, Robie is a talent developer. He has an amazing track record of taking lightly recruited guys (Walz, Haught, Penny (!), Mastriani (!), Yates) and getting them to AA status. Dresser let Robie and Zadick guide the workouts and drills. Moves like the hi-c and bow and arrow ride are all Robie. The one knock on Robie (and on VT wrestling, period), wrestling-wise is our guys do not escape well from the down position. as he builds his staff, he'd be well-served by assistant that is a master of the escape.

Dresser's strengths were: raising the profile of the program, recruiting (to an extent), building infrastructure, establishing a regional training center (RTC) for Olympic wrestlers, public relations, and constantly improving the staff and team. Dresser did NOT play the loyalty game, he washed out high profile recruits such as Cody Gardner, Ryan Clement, Huston Evans. He wasn't afraid to upgrade his coaching staff, eventually replacing Hoffman and Morrill with Zadick and St. John.

Robie will be tested immediately in the hiring game. There is one spot open, and retaining Zadick and St. John will be difficult. Will he hire an Olympic athlete that will be a recruiting draw? Will he hire a past trusted assistant like Ferrum's Nate Yetzer?

Second, Robie will need to work with donors to get more (a lot more) funding for the RTC. If we want to be a top 5, top 3 program, we will be competing with well-funded programs such as PSU, Ohio St, Oklahoma St, and Iowa. As we're seeing Iowa St has more donors and funding and schools like Minnesota have the infrastructure in place, RTC-wise. With all the talk regarding SERTC, we only had two additional guys training along with the team (Carter and Garwood) and neither are competing internationally. PSU has about ten guys, including World Team members David Taylor and Frank Molinaro.

If we want world-class, top three wrestlers to come to VT, we have to have world class wrestlers training at VT, both as coaches and as training partners. Additionally, with scholarships, do we give full rides to a couple of wrestlers, or partial rides to a number of wrestlers?

That said, Edinboro (Robie's alma mater) has done very well by identifying and developing wrestlers. Robie has many strong contacts in Pennsylvania and Ohio, very rich recruiting areas.

The last immediate test will be to limit attrition and retain the current team and commitments. There is always attrition in wrestling, and could be more if Zadick and St. John leave. But, there are also guys on the roster that can be developed.

Looking forward to the future with Coach Robie.