Trackwrestling Podcast

Open an episode of the Trackwrestling Podcast and the name you hear is On The Mat. It is built around two voices, Kyle Klingman and Andy Hamilton. Klingman does the welcome and the sign-off, and one episode introduces him as being with Flow Wrestling. Hamilton is the regular voice alongside him, introduced with a joke wedged into his name: 'Andy Hambone-Hamilton' in one episode, 'Andy, ready for the baseball season, Hamilton' in another. Much of the rest is conversation with guests from across the sport. Sean Bormet, the Michigan head coach, talks through roster calls that turn out to be personal ones. He covers Miles's decision to come back and wrestle, and why Stefan, whose heart lies more in freestyle than folkstyle, returned for a college season out of love for Michigan wrestling and the team while building his body toward 65 kilograms for the next Olympic cycle. Bormet notes that coming up from 57 kilos changes everything physically, from strength to leverage points. Hayden Hidlay of NC State, speaking after the college season, explains his retirement from competition in plain terms. He wants all of his energy in one thing, and that thing is coaching. He weighed a half-and-half path as a coach and an RTC athlete and turned it down. That episode's wrap-up observes that real estate at the top is expensive when a Kyle Snyder is there. Shane Sparks, of Flow Wrestling and the Big Ten Network, is the broadcaster in the mix, and his conversation is set on the cusp of the 2023 NCAA Division I Championships in Tulsa. He owns up to a ready, fire, aim wiring that has served him well and, at times, got him into trouble. Then a clip of his own words is read back to him verbatim: 'There will never be a three seed.' The summer recap with Kyle and Andy covers Fargo, the junior nationals at the Fargo Dome, starting with the 16U women, where Iowa won the team title after Hawaii and California had dominated. The discussion ties that result to Iowa sanctioning women's wrestling, since the title came with a pretty limited lineup. Throughout, the talk is conversational and warm, full of restarts and qualifiers, with long sentences that pile up examples before settling on a view. What a listener gets from all this is range: a 16U team race, NCAA seeding and a wrestler rebuilding his frame for an Olympic cycle, with the questions aimed at the choices behind results as much as the results. Where to start depends on the angle. For the coaching and roster side, 'Michigan head coach Sean Bormet goes On The Mat – OTM645' is the clearest entry. For the broadcast side, the Shane Sparks conversation, three-seed line and all, is the pick.