5PM Threads is a new feature with a simple premise: to present brief back-and-forth conversations with regards to athletes, as well as other topics, within the general sphere of Greco-Roman wrestling. It is titled “threads” due to how the dialogue is rendered on-screen for readers with the objective for these pieces to read, more or less, akin to text or direct-message threads.
For the premier, the subject is an American athlete whose considerable wrestling gifts are quite difficult to overstate: Kendrick Sanders. Sanders was a two-time US Open Champion and, throughout the scope of his career, regularly thought of as someone with World-medal capability. But unless Sanders returns to full-time competition, his journey as a full-time athlete ended without him having taken the mat in a major World tournament, a fact that could perhaps be labeled as either bothersome or confounding to those who watched him compete.
Joining the discourse for this edition of 5PM Threads, as well as for others coming soon, is Austin Morrow. Morrow — whose own sparkling career was cut short by injury following the Olympic Trials in 2021 — brings an expert perspective given that he himself was a top US competitor prior to walking away, plus he had trained alongside Sanders while they were teammates as part of Northern Michigan University’s Olympic Training Site. Morrow is still at NMU and currently functions as the assistant coach for the university’s women’s freestyle team.
5PM Threads — Kendrick Sanders
5PM: I posit that Kendrick Sanders is probably the best Greco-Roman wrestler, at least of his generation, to not have been on a Senior World or Olympic Team?
Austin Morrow: Oh, man. I think that it would be easy to argue that he is. He was in matches against guys who were successful and won World medals, and he traded matches with them. He is unbelievably talented and hard to wrestle in the room. One of Aghasi’s (the late Aghasi Manukyan) things was that Kendrick was one of the best wrestlers in the world and that it was crazy he didn’t have a medal. Aghasi firmly believed that, so that would be an easy one to argue. Kendrick would be in that conversation.
5PM: I mean, he obviously started lighter but once he got up into the 70’s as far as kilograms, he was surrounded by hammers like (Jake) Fisher and Andy (Bisek) and everyone else. He doesn’t get looked at it in that context but that was part of his schooling.
Morrow: Right, and he had an ability to jump weights, too. 66 kilos I think is where Kendrick was at when I first got to Northern. Or just leaving 66. And I’m not kidding, I think he went up from 66 to 71, and then to 80 kilos at the time. He wrestled (Aaron) Sieracki in the finals of what must have been the 2015 Open. But he jumped weights and went through gauntlets. He started with Ellis (Coleman) and (Harry) Lester at his weight, and then like you said he had Andy and Fisher. Plus, a lot of guys at 80 kilos, and there were good guys in those eras.
5PM: We can’t say this about everyone Kendrick lost to, but in that last phase of his career it was more that he beat himself than others beating him. That might seem tilted or something but it sounds more appropriate to me than to just say that he got straight-up beat by people. Do you think that’s fair?
Morrow: Very much so. Obviously, some of it was health-stuff injury-wise, but also maybe a little bit of mentality-stuff. I’m not sure if he dealt with match anxiety or put a lot of pressure on himself, but that stuff builds and builds and then it adds up. You know, it would be leading up to a big tournament or something and then he would break a rib, or hurt his hand. He could never stay healthy when he needed to stay healthy, at least near the end.
5PM: Plus he had family stuff, personal stuff off-the-mat that had to have affected him.
Morrow: Oh, for sure. The only thing I come back to is a mental block because, I mean, he had more ability than maybe anyone — ever. He was very, very, very talented.
5PM: I’m not going to mention the names of those involved, but there was another guy in Kendrick’s weight at Northern while you were all still there. Kendrick had lost to this other guy the year prior in a match that smart people would have expected to Kendrick to win. And one of your other teammates was talking to me one day and I brought up this match between Kendrick and the other guy. And your teammate goes, “Oh, in practice, Kendrick tech’s that dude in like :30 every time.” And I was like, Yup, that’s how that would probably happen. It made sense, you know what I mean?
Morrow: Yeah. And that’s what I mean, maybe it was match anxiety. Because in the practice room, it was a nightmare to deal with him. He was super-hard to score on. When I was coming up, Kendrick was a partner I wanted to grab every day and if I scored a single point against him, I was happy. Because, there were a lot of times when I didn’t. He was really hard to deal with, he moved really quick. He was strong. But yeah, I don’t know. Whenever it came tournament time, it wasn’t the same Kendrick that we saw in the room on a daily basis.
5PM: I remember after he beat (Spencer) Woods in the ’19 Open finals, him and I were on the phone for the post-tournament interview. Right away when we got on, I said something like, Kendrick, come on… I didn’t even finish the sentence, it trailed off, but I meant it like, Why can’t it be this way for you every time? Because it could be. And real, real calmly, he replied, “I know, I know…” He knew exactly what I meant by that and how he responded kind of broke my heart. Like, he got it. You know, maybe earlier in his career he might not have been ready to make a Team. But after that, as far as skillsets go, I don’t know who you could say was full-package better than him.
Morrow: Look at the Schultz that one year, against Italy I think it was…
5PM: You mean the powerbomb?
Morrow: (Laughs) Yeah, that went viral. (Click on video below to see the infamous “powerbomb”.)
5PM: That’s just the thing, everyone always goes first to his explosiveness but he was also an excellent hand-fighter who could keep tremendous position when he was in keyed-in. It wasn’t just the big moves.
Morrow: He could turn it on. He was really good at getting angles and turning it on. He could sprint you out of bounds if he needed to get one point. He was also great with par terre defense. And everyone knows that he himself could turn people. He had a phenomenal reverse lift. He was really good in all positions. There’s nothing bad you can say about his wrestling ability. He also definitely made practices really fun when we had match days. He was a very competitive guy, just like any wrestler who is trying to be great. If he were down by one, he would sprint to get two. Or three, four, whatever it may be. He kept practice really fun.
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