The Arizona State Sun Devils won the wrestling PAC-12 championships three weeks ago. When handed their team trophy, head coach Zeke Jones trusted senior 197-pounder Kordell Norfleet to hold it.
“I handed [the trophy] to Kordell, the most responsible guy on the team- at least one of the most responsible. I said ‘Hey, you guys never got to take the trophy at night, go ahead and take it,” Jones said.
Unfortunately, Jones trusted the wrong wrestler.
“[Kordell] freaking broke the trophy,” Jones said.
Coach Jones would leave a corner of the trophy cracked for the team to look back on in the future.
“I’m going to leave it like that because I’m sure they are going to have some fun story down the road,” Jones said.
The Sun Devils’ broken trophy is a fitting story for the season they are having.
After last season’s underwhelming early end, fans of the sport were speculative of ASU’s chances to repeat their success.
“It was a bummer. I mean that was a year we targeted… Three years ago we had been setting up for last year. [We were] redshirting people so we could have everybody in last year,” Jones said.
The Sun Devils put all their chips in to win a national championship last season, and it seemed as if their opportunity slipped away as soon as the NCAA Championships were canceled. When this season began very few people expected Arizona State to perform as well as they did last year.
Coach Jones used this message as motivation for his wrestlers to play underdog this season.
“I think at the beginning of the season we were ranked 18th or 20th in the nation. They certainly did not count on [Cohlton] Schultz. But I think a little bit of the team saying “Hey we are better than that,’ and obviously they are now showing they are. But they still haven’t achieved their goal, and I think that’s what that message is,” Jones said.
In case it was not made clear, Coach Jones’ crew has yet to settle for anything less than a national title this season.
It’s as if the chip in the trophy is a metaphor for the chip on these wrestlers’ shoulders throughout the season.
Despite how perfect this team has performed, it still is not enough to win over the hearts of the NCAA wrestling committee.
ASU went undefeated in duels, won five individual conference titles, and the PAC-12 as a team. Despite their impressive year, the Sun Devils are only ranked tenth in the nation with just four wrestlers seeded eighth or higher in their respective weight class at nationals this weekend.
Kordell and his teammates plan on shocking the world with their crushing performance and are hopeful of taking home another team trophy. It would seem as if the team is more motivated to bring home another trophy to replace the one they already broke this season.
