First Year Down, First Year To Go

One year since the hiring of Neil Erisman, things have been changing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Construction was starting on the new on-campus practice facility, recruits have joined Conner Ward, creating the roster for the first team that would take to the mats in November of 2019 and conference affiliation and scheduling was starting to become more prominent in coach Erisman’s day. That wrestling facility was set to finish in early September, just days before the official start of practice. Erisman’s wrestling family had grown, but his immediate family was growing too, as a new Erisman child was coming in the late summer. A year after Erisman was hired, the wrestling program started looking like it was a real wrestling program. With one year on the job done, but his first official year leading the school into uncharted waters, now the actual competitive work had to get done. Welcome to Rocked Up, the story of the foundation and formation of the first Division I college wrestling program in Arkansas, starting in November of 2019 at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. This is the ninth edition of this story. We started the journey developing the foundation of wrestling in the state of Arkansas and now we’ve moved on to the formation of the team, because to tell the full story of this program, you have to start at the very beginning. Rocked Up is a presentation of the Mat Talk Podcast Network and can be found on the web at GetRockedUp.com or at MatTalkOnline.com.