State College native claims Veterans United World Wrestling freestyle title
As the saying goes, age is just a number.
When thinking about athletes who don’t seem to slow down, a few names come to mind — such as Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ quarterback Tom Brady and Los Angeles Lakers’ forward LeBron James, who are still excelling in their respective professions at older ages.
Add another name to that list: State College native Rob Prebish.
Last week, Prebish claimed a freestyle title in the Veterans United World Wrestling Championships in Loutraki, Greece. Prebish won the 62-kilogram “C” Division class, which is for athletes who are 46-50 years old.
“It’s hard to really put into words what it feels like to bring home a world championship, especially at my age in the sport,” Prebish told the Centre Daily Times. “Most fans of wrestling focus on high school, college and Olympic-level athletes, rather than the grizzled veterans that just competed. But just like the younger guys, I put in a lot of preparation for this tournament. I executed a pretty solid training plan that got me ready to be at my peak.”
Prebish, who is an assistant wrestling coach at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond, Virginia, and the coaching director for the Virginia Amateur Wrestling Association, had just about 2.5 months to prepare for his title run. He said he started training after he finished coaching athletes in July at the USA Wrestling Junior and 16U National Championships in Fargo, North Dakota.
His training didn’t just consist of working on his wrestling.
“I immediately started training with cardio and strength training first,” Prebish said, “gradually adding wrestling back in. For the last three or four weeks, I focused on increasing my drill pace, working on more live situations and tactics.”
Prebish said he is a “very health conscious person,” so he made sure he was eating right every day, which is his normal routine. With the mixture of good eating, intense workouts and staying hydrated, he was able to go from his normal weight of around 145 pounds to the 136 pounds he had to weigh at to compete.
All of the training and healthy eating that Prebish put in had him at his peak. He didn’t have a single point scored against him in the three matches he wrestled.
Prebish opened his title run by running out to a 12-0 lead on fellow American wrestler Gary Cook, and pinned Cook in 1:27. In the semifinals, Prebish racked up a 10-0 technical superiority win over Israel’s Valery Asafove in 28 seconds.
In the finals, Prebish took on Switzerland’s Pascal Jungo. Jungo injury defaulted to Prebish, thus giving the 49-year old a world title.
He was one of three freestyle champions that the United States had crowned at the championships in the “C” and “D” divisions. There are five different divisions for different age groups. As a whole, the U.S. had nine total medalists in the “C” and “D” divisions.
“It’s nice to bring back a gold medal from Greece,” Prebish said, “but I think that the students I teach, people I work with and kids I coach will be much more excited than me. Wrestlers are a little different than other athletes. We tend to celebrate our victories for a day or two, then put it on the mantle and get started preparing for the next tournament. That’s how I am right now, (I’m) already thinking about next year’s world championships in Bulgaria.”
