Carmel hosts Újpesti Torna Egylet club for exchange program
By RICHIE HALL
One of the great traditions of the Indiana State Wrestling Association is that every summer, it hosts a cultural exchange program, sending Indiana wrestlers to other countries, or welcoming wrestlers from international lands.
The Carmel Wrestling Club has been involved in a few of those exchanges. The club hosted Japanese wrestlers a few years ago, then a couple of Greyhounds wrestlers, Alex Ryan and Eli Pinquite, went to Budapest, Hungary last summer.
This year, Hungary came to Carmel. The CWC hosted wrestlers from Újpesti Torna Egylet, or UTE, a well-known sports club in Budapest. The Hungarian team spent a few days in Carmel, with the trip wrapping up on the evening of July 20 when the Carmel wrestlers and the UTE wrestlers engaged in a friendly competition.
The UTE wrestlers proved to be a formidable group, but the goal wasn’t winning an international title. Carmel coach Ed Pendoski said there are two things involved in the cultural trip.
“There’s wrestling and then there’s the culture part,” said Pendoski. “This isn’t the World Championships. It’s your chance to use wrestling to experience different cultures.”
Pendoski was impressed with the UTE team’s talent and its approach.
“This group from Budapest, they can wrestle,” said Pendoski. “You can tell they train serious. Their coaches are very serious about wrestling.” Pendoski said after spending the week with the UTE team, he noted that the wrestlers do a good job of coaching their kids “as people, and then they teach them to wrestle. They’re using wrestling to help their athletes become better people.”
“Education and sport are separate in Hungary,” said Peter Farkas, one of the UTE wrestlers who made the trip. “No sport in either high schools or universities, or colleges, how you say. So, if you want to do sports seriously, you have to go down to a club and do it there. That’s what we are, a wrestling club. That’s why our kids aren’t just from one school. They are from all over the place. You have other cities.”
Carmel’s Tamir Halevi (right) competed against UTE’s Zsolt Bedák during the July 20 match. (Photo provided)
Different styles
Újpesti’s club, which consists of wrestlers from ages 16 to 20, made stops at Penn and Jeffersonville before finishing up its trip at Carmel. The UTE wrestlers were led by coaches Istvàn Nèmeth and Gàbor Faran, and they brought some different coaching styles and techniques to the Greyhounds.
“It was awesome the way they ran practice Wednesday morning,” said Pendoski. The Carmel coach made a list, writing down the things UTE does to warm up.
“It’s just different way to teach the sport,” said Pendoski. “It’s always neat to see. Obviously, it’s the other side of the world and how they do things differently.”
Pendoski said that when Nèmeth ran practice, “he ran through a bunch of throws. It’s a place that Carmel’s had a shortfall in the last couple of years. It’s not only what he teaches, but how they teach it, and how they practice it. Whenever I see a new coach, I watch how they teach maybe more than what they teaching, and watching them do their skills the way that they did in this, we’re going to add that starting next week.”
Nèmeth also detailed some differences, speaking through Farkas, who served as a translator.
“Definitely the stance,” he said. “They are much deeper down. And we learned some nice leg attacks and combinations from shootings and then developing after to better positions. Their overall stance and movement is better for freestyle, because they are so deep, almost like an old horse.”
Pendoski pointed out that during the U.S. high school wrestling season, student-athletes are wrestling in the folkstyle format. In the summertime, wrestlers switch to freestyle, a more physical style of wrestling. However, Hungary wrestlers compete in freestyle exclusively, along with a little bit of Greco-Roman, a style that does not allow holding off the legs.
“We don’t have any folkstyle in Europe, said Nèmeth and Farkas. “Their freestyle is different, too. Their whole style is different because they wrestle so much folkstyle, so that freestyle is different from ours. That’s why we came here, to learn from them.”
The UTE wrestlers also got to sightsee around Indiana during their trip. While at Penn, they headed to Notre Dame University. During their stay at Jeffersonville, they traveled across the Ohio River to Louisville and saw the Muhammad Ali Center.
Once at Carmel, the Újpesti wrestlers also went into Indianapolis and saw the highlights there, including the War Memorial, the courthouse, St. Elmo’s Steakhouse (where they tried the famous shrimp cocktail with the infamous spicy sauce), and of course the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The wrestlers went there on a day when there was a practice.
“The cars, they were so loud, so exciting,” said Farkas.
Carmel’s Jairo Ojeda and UTE’s Peter Farkas took time to pose for the camera after the friendly bout. (Richie Hall)
Getting a chance to see different cultures in different parts of the world has made the annual Cultural Exchange a worthwhile enterprise, as both Indiana wrestlers and their international counterparts become good friends.
“We became such good friends, even though we haven’t seen them in a year,” said Farkas. “And we still, like, greet each other. We love each other. It’s a really good experience.” Nèmeth echoed that sentiment, saying the Indiana wrestlers had become good friends.
“We have lots of opportunities to wrestle and we’re excited about wins and we’re sad about losses,” said Pendoski. “But the culture trips are a different part of your soul that is filled when you start to learn to create relationships with people on different sides of the planet.”
“As a closure, I really want to just say that, I never thought that wrestling was this powerful,” said Farkas. “I kind of underestimated. We have seen that we have so much friends internationally we didn’t even know about. We got our first AirBnB from a wrestling coach, for free. He said ‘Come on guys, you’re family.’ It’s so amazing, so amazing. Now, all we did achieve, everything we did during this trip was due to how wrestling is spread out throughout the world, and I think that’s amazing.”