Bucknell University Athletics
Beyond His Years
1/30/2007 7:00:00 AM | Wrestling
Jan. 30, 2007
By Jillian Jakuba, Bucknell Athletic Communications
Scanning the Bucknell wrestling roster, there is a common theme from top to bottom: Under the "class year" column, "Fr." appears next to the name of every student-athlete. Even though he has four years of wrestling eligibility like everyone else, Eric Lapotsky is perhaps the closest thing the Bison have to an upperclassman.
In the fall of 2005, Lapotsky departed his hometown of Mount Carmel, Pa., to embark on career as a collegiate wrestler and physical therapy major at Slippery Rock University. However, he never saw action in a match. Lapotsky, because of reasons outside of wrestling, decided to transfer out of the school.
"I wasn't sure what I wanted to do academically and it was all kind of a mess for me," Lapotsky recalls. "I was dead-set on majoring in physical therapy and once I changed my mind about that, there wasn't a strong reason for me to stay at Slippery Rock."
As fate would have it, this turned out to be a good move for Lapotsky's future as a wrestler, because on Jan. 30, 2006, Slippery Rock announced plans to drop wrestling as a varsity sport at the end of the 2005-06 season.
"At first I thought it was such a bad thing that I didn't know where I wanted to be or what I wanted to do," admits Lapotsky. "Then once I found out Slippery Rock was cutting its program, I realized I would have ended up going somewhere else to wrestle anyway."
Just prior to the announcement, Lapotsky had begun his first semester at Bucknell, which is only a stone's throw away from home for the 197-pounder. Ironically, the new program Lapotsky was joining was in the final stages of its re-instatement process. A donation that now totals more than 7.5 million dollars by former Bison wrestler Bill Graham `62 had made it possible for Bucknell to return wrestling to varsity status for 2005-06. However, a decision was made not to schedule any competitions for that season in order to allow the coaching staff time to concentrate on recruiting student-athletes for the newly-resurrected program. Thus, this left Lapotsky with a semester of one-on-one time with the Bison coaches, Dan Wirnsberger and Larry Sprecher, to prepare for 2006-07.
"I was surprised when I got here" Lapotsky says. "I knew going in that I would have a semester to work with the coaches, get to know them and get better, but I was expecting it to be a lot more laid back than it turned out to be. I was training just as hard as we are training right now."
Lapotsky, as a one-man team last spring, was put through a full lifting program, accompanied by two-to-three workouts a day. This was a challenge for him as he was also going through the process of acclimating himself to Bucknell, but now Lapotsky is reaping the rewards of his hard work.
"Looking back on it now, I feel a couple steps ahead," he explains. "Coming into this year, I felt a little more experienced and ready to go because I knew what to expect from this year in terms of training and what it took to be a good wrestler at the collegiate level. I credit the majority of that to getting the one-on-one attention last year. If I didn't have that semester, let's say I waited the year out at Slippery Rock and wasn't wrestling and came to Bucknell this past fall, I wouldn't be nearly as prepared as I was at the start of this season."
Lapotsky's numbers further demonstrate the benefits of his extra time in the wrestling room. Heading into the team's tri-meet with Liberty and Millersville, his overall record stood at 18-4, with a 12-2 mark in duals. In addition, he not only leads the Bison with 13 wins by fall, but is also ranked second in the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association in the category and is tied for fifth in Bucknell history for pins in a season.
Although he led his high school squad in falls twice, Lapotsky's percentage of pinning opponents in his wins has gone up considerably.
"I've always been good on top, so that is one of the reasons why pins come pretty easily to me," he explains. "I definitely give a lot of credit to that semester last year, though, since I learned new technique. I have a lot more moves in my arsenal now because of Coach Wirnsberger and Coach Sprecher and I think that's why I pin a lot more people now, because they spent so much time working with me and really developed my technique to a higher level than it has ever been."
The new technique was put to the test for the first time on Nov. 11, 2006, when the Bison traveled to Drexel for a tri-meet and opened with a dual against Maryland. After starting out with a 10-3 deficit, Bucknell rallied and carried a one-point advantage into Lapotsky's bout at 197 against highly-touted red-shirt freshman Hudson Taylor. Just 1:05 into the first period, he pinned Taylor to clinch the squad's first dual victory since 2001.
"To get a win and a pin in my first college match was pretty exciting," Lapotsky recalls. "Especially since Taylor was nationally-ranked at the time. That, along with clinching the team win for us against Maryland, make that one match I'll never forget."
That win, along with his heightened level of experience from an extra semester of training, would appear to tab Lapotsky as the team's "veteran" leader. However, he is reluctant to admit that is the case.
"I was definitely in a position to help my teammates get through the more challenging times of adjusting to training for college wrestling, because out of everything we are doing this year, none of it is a surprise to me," says Lapotsky. "But at this point in the season, all the guys are well prepared and it's more like everyone is a leader on the team. I have a tremendous amount of respect for our coaches and think that they're doing a fantastic job with a freshmen team. They don't take it easy on us because of our age, we train just as hard as a normal team and I definitely think that is why we are having so much success. It's really going to show in this last stretch, what we're really made of."
Lapotsky's experiences have made his class year somewhat of a misnomer. Thankfully for the Bison, however, he is a freshman, and will have three more seasons after this one to further make an impact for Bucknell Wrestling.
