Rocked Up
Wrestling is the world's oldest sport. In Arkansas, it's the newest. Follow the University of Arkansas at Little Rock as it starts up a brand new sport in a place that hasn't seen major college wrestling in half a century. Rocked up follows the fledgling wrestling program as it begins from scratch with a start date of November 2019. Produced by the Mat Talk Podcast Network.
Episodes
January 22, 2021 • 50 mins
This is a special bonus episode of #RockedUp that's actually the January 21 episode of the Short Time Wrestling Podcast. It's plugged into the feed to give subscribers an update on the program since the whistle blew on Conner Ward's first match. Little Rock hosted its first home event of the year on January 17 at the Jack Stephens Center against Oklahoma State and SIUE. The tri-meet launched the second season of Little Rock wrestl...
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November 29, 2019 • 25 mins
When November 24, 2019 finally came, it put a close on the building era of the Little Rock wrestling program. It’s been 616 days since the announcement during the 2018 NCAA Division I Championships of a new Division I program. For coach Neil Erisman, it’s been 522 days since he was introduced as the first head coach in program history. For wrestling fans in the state of Arkansas, it was a decade and a half in the making. The only t...
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November 21, 2019 • 27 mins
With the days winding down before Little Rock wrestlers take to their home mat at the Jack Stephens Center for the first time, there’s been a change at the top. One of the men instrumental in making Little Rock’s wrestling program a reality, Chasse Conque, left Little Rock in late August to accept the role of Athletic Director at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley, which came into being after a consolidation of three separat...
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November 15, 2019 • 26 mins
For a solid year, Neil Erisman was it when it came to the new wrestling program at Little Rock. He was every coach, every recruiting coordinator, he ran every errand that needed to be run. He did all this while awaiting the completion of his offices and wrestling facility and with a wife and three – soon to be four – kids at home. It might have been the busiest year of the young coach’s life. But when it came time to hire an assist...
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November 4, 2019 • 25 mins
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 s...
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October 15, 2019 • 24 mins
With coaches hired and administrative support set, the first whistle blows for Little Rock’s first wrestling dual in November of 2019. But even before that dual and that official season commences, there’s one athlete who’s already ready to roll. When new programs are started, colleges typically decide to hire a coach and recruit athletes the year prior to actual competition. Those coaches will then redshirt those athletes, allowing...
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October 11, 2019 • 24 mins
There’s a lot of moving parts in a college athletics department. It’s more than just an Athletic Director and some coaches. There’s support staff, administrative assistants, academic support, compliance, sports information, marketing and promotions, ticket sales, donor relations – so when the University of Arkansas-Little Rock announced its new Division I wrestling program in March of 2018, there was a lot more work involved from a...
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September 3, 2019 • 24 mins
If you’re the athletics director at a Division I institution and you’re looking to hire a head coach to start your team from scratch, what are some of the credentials you look for? If you’re starting a basketball team, are you going to look at someone like a legendary coach like Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski or UConn’s Geno Auriemma? Would you go with a legendary athlete like a Michael Jordan or a LeBron James? In football, are you lookin...
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August 19, 2019 • 24 mins
Capturing the nation's attention In the big money world of Division I college athletics, only five championship sports actually make the NCAA money. Of course, the biggest is the Final Four, the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament. Now 68 teams play their way to a championships. The venues are large and the volume of printed brackets and online office pools is astronomical. The other championships that make the NCAA money a...
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August 11, 2019 • 20 mins
A Legend Comes to Town In the lore of college sports, there's always the aura of having done something no one else had ever done. In 1994, a wrestler from Oklahoma State University named Pat Smith became the first wrestler in NCAA Division I wrestling history to win four straight national championships. Years later, Smith would be talked into moving to Arkansas and helping create one of the largest grassroots wrestling movements th...
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First, Best or Different - How Ouachita Baptist paved the way for college wrestling in Arkansas This entire series has been telling you one story to set up another. On Episode 3, we look back at the impact of the first college wrestling program in Arkansas in nearly 50 years, Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. Ouachita Baptist started wrestling in 2010. The nearest opponent within Division II was six hours west i...
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May 9, 2019 • 31 mins
What came first, the chicken or the egg? On the second episode of Rocked Up, we'll meet Little Rock radio personality and former Arkansas football player David Bazzel. He'll introduce us to how Greg Hatcher, an insurance man in Little Rock, talked him into pitching a press conference to try to introduce wrestling to the state's high schools. Hatcher will further explain the process in going from idea to sanctioned high school state...
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April 17, 2019 • 28 mins
Wrestling is the world's oldest sport. In Arkansas, it's the newest.
This is Rocked Up, the story of the foundations and formations of a new college sports team at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
What makes this story unique isn't just the fact it's a new sport, but the sport itself is new to the entire state. It's a journey unlike any other.
This is Rocked Up, the story of the foundations and formations of a new college sports team at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
What makes this story unique isn't just the fact it's a new sport, but the sport itself is new to the entire state. It's a journey unlike any other.
Mark as Played
February 26, 2019 • 1 min
Launching in the Spring of 2019 is Rocked Up, a new serialized podcast produced by the Mat Talk Podcast Network chronicling the start of a new Division I sport at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Season 1 will start from the beginning and chronicle why the school made its decision and chose wrestling, a sport that didn't exist even at the high school level 10 years ago, and how it might change how things are done in coll...
Mark as Played
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