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Bill Zadick reflects on last two years leading Team USA freestyle team

Posted at 9:13 PM, Jul 06, 2018
and last updated 2018-07-19 16:48:40-04

The U.S. Senior Men’s National Freestyle wrestling team is set after the Final X team trials wrapped up last month, and now head coach Bill Zadick and his team are looking ahead to the World Championships in Hungary set for October.

But regardless of the outcome, Zadick’s two-year tenure as head of Team USA has proved fruitful. In April, Zadick led the team to its first World Freestyle Cup in 15 years and last August Team USA claimed a freestyle world championship for the first time since 1995, edging out Russia by one point in Paris.

“The last two years I would describe as a whirlwind, intense, very successful, very exciting, but we still need to keep that in perspective,” Zadick said. “Success is a fickle thing, and you do something exceptional it sets an expectation, and anything less than that now is in some views as failure, but I don’t really measure success by wins and losses; it’s progress in life areas.”

It helps to have world-class athletes on the roster. Kyle Snyder and Jordan Burroughs are both individual world champions, with four other wrestlers claiming medals in Paris. But they’re by no means satisfied.

“We try to maintain a real process-oriented evaluation,” Zadick said. “Are we doing the right things, are we continuing on a path of successful living, a path of excellence? And then we let the accolades and achievements take care of themselves, and it’s a great blessing when you hit those markers. But you don’t want to get too high and likewise, when you don’t have the performance accolade, you don’t fall too low because you’re still focused on a process-oriented goal. You have little successes all day long, even in your near misses.”

The World Wrestling Championships will take place Oct. 22-28 in Budapest, Hungary.