After getting a good night’s sleep following the festivities at the NCAA Division III Championships, I awoke Sunday, packed up and left my digs at the Cedar Rapids Marriott and headed north.

Between the Division II and III tournaments, I’m working remotely from Minnesota, getting a chance to get some more meetings and wedding planning stuff taken care of. Before leaving Cedar Rapids, I checked the boards and saw they were still rather “tame” when the volume of college wrestling going on was booming.

This would change in a matter of hours.

I got in my trusty Chevy Trailblazer (which now has over 40,000 miles on it – I bought it last January with 6,700) and started to drive up I-35. Before I got on the road, I called Iowa City Press-Citizen wrestling beat writer Andy Hamilton to find out what Iowa-based radio stations were in Ann Arbor broadcasting the Big Ten Championships.

He told me to check AM 800 KXIC. I dialed in, diverting my radio from it’s normal “90’s on 9” on XM Radio and found the signal with Steven Grace and Mark Ironside.

I have never listened to an Iowa radio broadcast, other than sitting behind Ironside in Carver-Hawkeye a few times last season. Living in Minnesota last year and Colorado now, it’s not like I can just tune in and listen.

But with the drive mounting, I was hoping I’d get enough time to listen. Grace was the first voice I heard, as Ironside was, “chillin’” during the break before the finals and consolation finals.

I must say, even though I’m not an Iowa fan (and really not a “fan” of any team when I put on my media hat, although I openly admit, in my spare time, I follow my alma mater and wrestlers I know pretty well from various schools), the broadcast was quite good.

If you’re listening from an Iowa perspective (which I’m not), it seemed to fill in everything you’d want to know as a Hawkeye fan. If you were listening from my perspective, one looking for all the results and what was going on in the finals, you were also very satisfied.

Andy had told me I’d probably get the signal for about an hour or so. I figured I’d lose it around Cedar Falls/Waterloo, which is the same spot I lost my old Blazer last year, when I played chicken with a concrete barrier on Highway 218. The concrete won.

Anyway, I was pleased to keep a strong signal all the way up to Clear Lake, just before hopping on I-35/Avenue of the Saints to get back to the Twin Cities. I listened all the way through the finale of the 184 pound match before the buzz got to be too much. I was also following Craig Sesker’s twitter updates on the USA Wrestling Twitter page, so I was covered on all aspects.

Now, expecting an Iowa-heavy broadcast, I was pleasantly surprised to hear how “even” things went during the Brent Metcalf-Lance Palmer 149-pound final. While Grace did sound somewhat surprised when Metcalf got hit for stalling in the second period, Ironside backed up the call, explaining the rule and essentially coming off unsurprised by the call.

When the flurry of action occurred, I could picture it in my head. I went back and watched it on YouTube on Monday, and the descriptions given by Grace and Ironside were dead on close to what I’d pictured in my mind. Solid broadcasting by the two.

Now, when Palmer put Metcalf to his back, I, and I’m sure a ton of other wrestling fans,let out a collective “Oh .” Why? It had nothing to do with either wrestler, but I’d know I’d have some heavy surgery to perform on the message boards in about two hours, since that’s roughly how far away I was from a computer when the result happened. I probably broke a few traffic laws by perusing the boards on my iPhone, but I knew the boards would erupt.

Before I go into the board issues, and how much I was NOT looking forward to going through the threads, Grace and Ironside’s commentary was foreign to me, yet, exactly what I’d expected.

When you grow up and live in areas where you don’t hear wrestling on the radio, especially not with the presence and push that KXIC gives the fans in Southeastern Iowa, you really come to appreciate the ability to follow one of the best wrestling tournaments in the nation while driving through the land of windmills and corn.

Because of KXIC, I was able to keep tabs with the Big Ten and not spend time averting my eyes from the road to my iPhone (at least not as much as I would have). Grace and Ironside’s passion, not just for Iowa wrestling, but for good wrestling in general shines. It’s unfortunate that I won’t have a chance to listen to those guys again for some time, but it made half of the 4 ½ hour drive back to Minnesota just fly by.

Now, as it relates to the message boards. I think I’ve combined 15-16 Metcalf ONLY related topics into one on the boards. We’re still seeing good topics pushed back 2-3 pages because people are harping about one match. But I could honestly care less about the winner or loser of the match, because it made my Sunday less than enjoyable after the fact!

I did, however, have time to go to Kinko’s and make copies of wedding directions, etc., so thankfully for my fiancée’s sake, I wasn’t stuck on a computer the entire night. We do live 1,000 miles apart right now, so wrestling gets in the way sometimes, but it won’t too much this week – until I leave for Omaha.

So this week, it’s Minnesota, with the NCAA brackets coming out in two days, and I’m sure I’ll have more forum fun come then.

A great weekend in D3’s, followed by a great drive north (the sun came out just as I got to Owatonna), and now a week of preparation for D2’s and D1’s.