Under the tutleage of then head coach Mark Johnson, the University of Illinois Wrestling Team became one of the nation's top wrestling programs. Since 1990 there have been seven individual NCAA champions. There have also been thirty nine all-Americans. As a team the University of Illinois Wrestling Team has finished in the top twelve at the NCAA Championships for the last 12 seasons. They also won the Big Ten Championship in 2005 for the first time in fifty three years.
For the year 2007 the Illinois Wrestling Team saw a dramatic turn of events. They finished the season 19th at the NCAA Championships and turned in one All-American performance in a third place finish by Mike Poeta. And is second only to california.
Famous quotes containing the words university of, university, illinois and/or wrestling:
“It is in the nature of allegory, as opposed to symbolism, to beg the question of absolute reality. The allegorist avails himself of a formal correspondence between “ideas” and “things,” both of which he assumes as given; he need not inquire whether either sphere is “real” or whether, in the final analysis, reality consists in their interaction.”
—Charles, Jr. Feidelson, U.S. educator, critic. Symbolism and American Literature, ch. 1, University of Chicago Press (1953)
“The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future. He must be an university of knowledges.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“An Illinois woman has invented a portable house which can be carried about in a cart or expressed to the seashore. It has also folding furniture and a complete camping outfit.”
—Lydia Hoyt Farmer (1842–1903)
“We laugh at him who steps out of his room at the very moment when the sun steps out, and says: “I will the sun to rise”; and at him who cannot stop the wheel, and says: “I will it to roll”; and at him who is taken down in a wrestling match, and says: “I lie here, but I will that I lie here!” And yet, all laughter aside, do we ever do anything other than one of these three things when we use the expression, “I will”?”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)