At Michigan, I get the great opportunity and privilege to interview some of the world's greatest

athletes. And today, I get a chance to talk to the top college wrestler this year. Mason

Paris, the Dan Hodge Trophy Award winner. Stay tuned for that conversation coming up in just a few moments on Conquering Heroes.

Welcome to your one-stop podcast for all things Michigan Athletics.

Updates on every team on campus and interviews with players and coaches are all on the way.

This is Conquering Heroes.

Here's your host, John Janssen. Well, I have the great pleasure of being joined by this year's Dan Hodge Trophy recipient who is given out to the top college wrestler every year. It is the Heisman

trophy of college wrestling, and that is Mason Paris. Mason, thanks for joining me, and

congratulations. Your thoughts on winning college wrestling's top honor. Yeah, thank you

for having me. It's been an honor, you know, winning that, winning that prestigious

award. And I've just been on cloud nine, I've been super excited about it. You know, this was my

goal coming into the season. I was setting my goals as high as possible. And, you know, finally got it

done and, you know, it feels great. And it's a huge relief and you know it's great just all the

support I've you know gotten gotten for it so let's go back to the beginning of the season you

mentioned hey you set your goals high on all-American on the dan hodge award all of those different

things but coming into this year, you had some obstacles

to overcome. What was your focus in terms of how you wanted to improve, how you wanted to be a

better wrestler at the beginning of the year? Yeah, there was a lot of things I wanted to improve on.

I was overcoming an injury last year with a herniated dip. So, you know, I just trained that

entire summer, getting healthy, getting strong. You know, I took weightlifting really seriously.

And I spent a lot of extra time in the wrestling room, too, you know, just improving my technique.

And I think another one of the major things for me was building my the mental side of wrestling you know a lot

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