A Sea Of Red

From the local fishwrap:

Undefeated Shuler follows family's lead

By Ted Allen
Lynchburg News & Advance
January 22, 2008

Pressure to live up to his older brothers' success and his father's expectations kept Brookville junior Nathan Shuler from wrestling competitively until he got to high school.

After playing soccer from the time he was 5, he finally gave the family sport a shot as a freshman. That was nearly 10 years after his brothers Andrew and Patrick won five individual state championships in a five-year span in the late 1990s before going on to wrestle at Wyoming.

"It's kind of pre-ordained a little bit," Nathan said of following his family's footsteps onto the wrestling mat. "But I enjoy it now. It's fun."

The sport didn't come naturally to the younger Shuler at first.

His father, Don Shuler, the former U.S. Olympic alternate who later coached Liberty University's team, plugged Nathan into the starting lineup in his first season at the helm, after succeeding longtime coach Paul Anthony.

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I wish we could have started this team earlier so we could have gotten his brother

Jesse Castro was at the Brookville/Staunton River match last week (great match by the way). There are quite a few Brookville wrestlers who will be attending LU even if it isn't for wrestling. There may be a good chance to pick up some walk-ons that have had great high school coaching (Shuler). However, I doubt if Nathan ends up at LU (although it would be very nice!). The Stewart boys (asst. coach Warren Stewart's sons) have a much better chance of ending up at LU I would think. As the article states, Zeb is a sophomore at 125 lbs., Eli is a freshman at 112 lbs. and Luke is a seventh grader. They are excellent wrestlers themselves (there are two more after Zeb, Eli, and Luke!)

yeah, maybe if LU hadn't cut the program in the FIRST PLACE, we would have gotten BOTH Patrick and Andrew. I went to school with both of them back in elementary school. they were studs then.

hopefully we will pick up some studs from the area. would be nice if nathan ended up on the same team his dad used to coach.

Sadly enough, Nathan lost his first match of the season at a tournament this past weekend. But he wrestled hard and well, and took second place. He has improved SO much!

Nathan was beat in the final ten seconds of the match by Aaron Thompson, who has committed to wrestle at LU next year. Both of these young men were class acts. The Roanoke fishwrap did a great article on Aaron's victory as he not only won the tournament championship but also was awarded the Bob McLelland Award.

http://www.roanoke.com/sports/highschool/wb/148617

takedown with 8 sec. left... doesnt get much more exciting than that!