Army West Point Athletics
Getting to Know: Chandler Smith
June 30, 2014 | Wrestling
June 30, 2014
Each weekday this summer a new cadet-athlete will be featured in Getting to Know, a Q&A series where Army fans can read about their favorite players. Today's cadet is senior wrestler Chandler Smith.
NAME: Chandler Smith
HOMETOWN: Overland Park, Kan.
MAJOR: Double major in American Politics and Latin American Foreign Area Studies
FAVORITE ATHLETE: Dan Tyminski
FAVORITE SPORTS TEAM: The Denver Broncos
BEST PART OF ARMY WRESTLING: Being surrounded by like minded, hard-working individuals.
FAVORITE VENUE TO WRESTLE AT: The Palestra at UPENN is a pretty cool venue. There’s a lot of history there and it’s always kind of surreal wrestling there.
OPPONENT MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO WRESTLING: Dylan Palacio from Cornell and I have a little rivalry. He is one of the best wrestlers in the country and he definitely brings the best out of me when we wrestle.
HOW ARE YOU SPENDING YOUR SUMMER: I hope to train as much as possible since I have completed most of my graduation requirements already. I will be at West Point June 17th and then due to a cancelled military training school I’ll be home until wrestling starts July 27th. When back home I’ll stay busy training and coaching Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Mixed Martial Arts, CrossFit, and wrestling as much as I can to ensure I come back in the best shape of my life.
TO RELAX, I: Surf the web for good long-form journalism articles.
FAVORITE MEAL: Tamales de rajas con queso.
FAVORITE VACATION SPOT: Crossfit 215 in Philadelphia is the only place I’ve taken a vacation to in the past few years.
MY IPOD HAS: Everything. I think that every genre of music has a context in which it can be enjoyed so I have a lot of stuff. My favorite artists right now are Childish Gambino, the Arctic Monkeys, Camera Obscura, and Snakehips.
FAVORITE PART OF AN ARMY MATCH DAY: Eating and drinking after weigh-ins.
FAVORITE PART OF WEST POINT: The competition here is great at bringing the best out of me. The ranking system encourages hard work and I love how it pushes me to get better.
DESCRIBE ARMY WRESTLING: A brotherhood. Definitely the closest group I’ve ever interacted with.
WHAT WRESTLER WILL SURPISE PEOPLE IN 2014-15: Travis Mallo is a really good wrestler who’s had to fight through a few injuries the past few years. When he’s healthy he is an incredible wrestler and he’ll shock a lot of people this year.
WHO IS STRONGEST WRESTLER ON TEAM: Stephen Snyder. Not even close.
WHO IS FASTEST WRESTLER ON TEAM: Justin Seim can flat out fly. It’s close though, we have a lot of really fast guys on the squad.
WHO IS FUNNIEST WRESTLER ON TEAM: Samson Imonode and Hunter Wood are both hilarious.
WHICH WRESTLER IS MOST LIKLEY TO BECOME A GENERAL: One of our old team captains, Jimmy Rafferty, is the best leader I have ever been around and none of us who know him would be surprised to see him as a general.
WHAT TEAM THAT IS NOT ON OUR SCHEDULE WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY AND WHY: I wrestled in Missouri during high school, so it would be cool to wrestle Mizzou and go against guys who I wrestled with and against in high school.
I FOLLOW HOW MANY PEOPLE ON TWITTER: I’m not hip enough to have a twitter.
2014 Getting to Know Archive
Players Mentioned
