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NCAA WRESTLING CHAMPIONSHIP

March 19, 2016

Kyle Snyder

New York, New York

THE MODERATOR: Joining us is heavyweight champion Kyle Snyder. Kyle, talk about especially the ending of your little match there and we'll open it up for questions.

KYLE SNYDER: Nick's a great wrestler, great competitor. Hopefully we can train together in the future and continue to grow together, because I think he's going to have -- hopefully he keeps wrestling and he's going to have a great future in the sport. But it was a fun match. I think it will go down as one of the most exciting heavyweight matches in NCAA history. And obviously I'm happy that the end result was to get my hand raised. But I think I improved as a wrestler throughout the match, too, and that was fun.

Q. He takes you down with -- he like passes you. That just doesn't happen in the heavyweight division. And you just, the way you recovered from it, what's going through your mind when you get taken down with a leg pass by a 260-plus-pound Nick Gwiazdowski?
KYLE SNYDER: I wasn't surprised because when we trained together that was something he had taken me down with a couple times before. And my game plan, part of my game plan was to get to my feet as fast a could with my shots as I doesn't do as good a job of because he's a scrambler, always been a good scrambler. Felt like I kept my composure very well. It's almost like when he locked up that cradle, I was, like, if I get pinned again I'm going to lose my mind. But he's an athletic heavyweight. Good wrestler.

Q. When you go to overtime, what's going through your mind?
KYLE SNYDER: I felt good in overtime. I knew that the momentum was running towards my way. I've been in that situation before where I needed to score. And kind of had that low single off of the overtime in my head. It's something that's been working for me this whole season. And then in overtime, I knew it was just getting stingy and gritty with my takedown. When I get to a leg I have to finish, can't get in any funny business. I was able to get my hips under me and score that takedown.

Q. Obviously a hugely anticipated match. Can you just talk about what the atmosphere was like out there tonight?
KYLE SNYDER: It was incredible. It was so much fun. It's hard to really tell when you're wrestling just how much the fan's are getting into it. You can kind of hear them, but everything's kind of not as loud as it would normally be if you were just sitting there listening. After the match was over they were challenging the takedown, I could really hear the crowd yell, and look up to the Ohio State section and it was pretty special.

Q. If this is supposed to be one of the greatest heavyweight matches of all times where does this rank you among the all-time heavyweights?
KYLE SNYDER: I have no idea. Umm, I mean, Nick has two titles. And I've only got one. I've still got a lot of wrestling to do. So I don't think you can really mark me in anywhere yet until my career is over.

Q. You're on quite a run, world championship, the NCAA Championship. How does this affect your plans for the future and do you think this kind of makes you a targeted guy by everybody else who is coming up?
KYLE SNYDER: It probably makes me a targeted guy, but I think since my freshman year of high school I've been targeted and people have -- every time they wrestle me, it's one of their biggest matches of the year. So I'm used to that now. And when I win something big, I don't relax. It makes me hungrier, I want it again. I want to improve and I want to do it in a more dominant way next time I wrestle in it. So the next thing is the Olympic Trials in three weeks. And that's a big competition for me, so I've got a lot of work to do and I seek an amount of improvement for that.

Q. Kyle, feels like we've been here before, world championships in Las Vegas. You kind of wait out the rush until the end, getting tied. Tonight you get in on shots that you normally always succeed on. He locks you up with that strength. Was it a point where you said, I need to back off a little bit and wait until the end of the match and keep it close until then?
KYLE SNYDER: Not really in the beginning of the match, I wanted to keep getting to his legs, and I felt I would finish eventually, get my head in the right spot and get up into him. But at the end I knew he didn't have much over a minute of riding time, so it wouldn't have made sense for me to take him down and give him enough time to escape, so I kind of got it at the perfect moment to where there was enough time for me to ride him out because I'm not that great on top, so I needed as little time on the clock as possible.

Q. What did you see that made you attack and go after that opening there in overtime?
KYLE SNYDER: Just a setup I've been using a lot in the practice room and in my matches so far this season. And I kind of know where guys are going to float out when I do that setup. And I knew where his foot was going to be and I kind of hit it as his foot was hitting the mat. So it was really nothing, no funky business that could go on. And I knew I'd be scoring the points.

Q. Talk about the decision to come out of Olympic redshirt. And now that you've gone through this part of the journey, whether you think it was it the right decision for you and for the team and for our country?
KYLE SNYDER: Yeah, I would say it's the right decision. I think that I've learned more -- you always learn more when you compete. You can go into practice and you can wrestle. But it's just a little bit different than when you're going out there actually competing. You can challenge yourself more to open up and actually wrestle the way you want to wrestle and not be all tight when you're out there competing, especially in these big matches. And even if I would have lost that finals match I would still say that this is the right decision for me, the right decision for the United States, and hopefully I can prove that April 10.

Q. You are only 19 or 20 years old. Do you realize -- is that young or what?
KYLE SNYDER: Yeah, I think -- yeah, it's young. But I've got pretty big goals, and if you want to achieve them you've gotta do it right now. You can't wait. You've got to improve as fast as you can, try to learn more about the sport and hopefully while you're doing that pick up a couple of wins.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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