IOWA CITY, Ia. — Coleman Scott stopped mid-sentence Saturday night, an Olympic Trials champion awestruck by the scene around him.

Two past Olympic wrestling teams stood center stage inside Carver-Hawkeye Arena. The biggest crowd in Olympic Trials history applauded. Dan Gable stepped to the front of the line in the city he turned wrestling-crazy and 13,750 roared.

Scott watched in admiration as the ovation for Gable lasted more than 30 seconds. By the time it ended, he forgot the original question and his emotions came out.

“I don’t like Iowa, but you come here and it’s awesome — there’s nothing (bad) I can say about it,” said Scott, an NCAA champion for Iowa rival Oklahoma State. “Iowa did an awesome job hosting this thing so far. … We doubled (the 2008 Olympic Trials attendance) here. That’s pretty cool to me.”

USA Wrestling brought the Trials to Iowa City in search of bigger crowds, louder cheers and a better sendoff for its Olympians — and Carver-Hawkeye Arena delivered Saturday.

Reigning world champion Jordan Burroughs and 2011 bronze medalist Jake Varner clinched spots on the U.S. freestyle team, Greco-Roman stars Spenser Mango, Justin Lester, Chas Betts and Dremiel Byers punched tickets to London, and Kelsey Campbell and Stephany Lee toppled top seeds in women’s freestyle.

Burroughs needed three periods to beat Andrew Howe 4-2, 1-2, 1-0 in the opening match of the 163-pound championship series. The second bout never occurred after Howe pulled out with an injury.

“I would’ve liked to have dominated the second match and have a lot of Americans get to see me wrestle,” Burroughs said. “I’ll never forget this. For the rest of my life I’ll always remember I had that second match that wasn’t wrestled. But I won the first match, gutted it out and got it done and I’m happy about it.”

Like Burroughs, Varner has bigger goals than just making the Olympic team. The two-time NCAA champion from Iowa State won four consecutive periods to sweep the best-of-three championship against Tommy Rowlands at 211.5.

“I’m going there to win the gold medal or I wouldn’t be doing this,” said Varner, who used last-second takedowns to win the second and third periods of the first bout and won a 2-0, 1-0 decision to clinch the series. “It’s kind of cool to say you’re an Olympian, but I want to be an Olympic champion.”

Scott’s work isn’t done yet. The 132-pound Trials champion’s Olympic hopes rest on the shoulders of Shawn Bunch, who left this week in an attempt to qualify the weight class at a tournament in China.

If Bunch qualifies the weight for the Olympics, he would tangle later this spring with Scott and 2011 World Team member Reece Humphrey, who sat out this week with an injury, to determine the Olympic participant.

“It’s probably not the best situation for me, but I’ve got to do it,” said Scott, who swept Ohio State freshman Logan Stieber in the final series. “If I go get a couple more wins in a couple weeks, I’ll solidify my spot and show ’em I’m an Olympian.”

Mango, Lester, Betts and Byers — all past World Team members — all punctuated their titles by sweeping the best-of-three championship series.

Campbell and Lee took the tough route through the tournament, wrestling through Saturday’s Challenge Tournament before knocking off top seeds who received an automatic pass to the finals.

Lee beat 2005 World champion Iris Smith and swept the 158.5-pound final against 2011 World bronze medalist Ali Bernard. winning all four periods by a collective 17-4 margin.

Campbell, who started wrestling nine years ago as a high school senior on a bet she couldn’t last two weeks on the boys team, defeated Helen Maroulis in a pair of three-period bouts at 121.

“It’s surreal,” Campbell said with her eyes still watering more than 10 minutes after punching her ticket to the London Games. “I feel like I’m dreaming. Is this real? It’s crazy. It’s awesome. So many people believed, a lot of people believed. But I think I had to go out there and do it to believe.”

So with the little delay out of the states to Frankfurt we ended up missing our connecting flight to Romania, so we had to sit around for a couple hours and hang out. One of the US greco teams ended up showing up, so then at that time we knew we at least had a ride to the hotel when we got to Romania. We finally land in Romania and there is about 15 of us, and we had to pack ourselves into this 15 or so passenger bus, with all of our luggage as well. Being wrestlers as we are, we made it all fit. Our drive was only about 40 miles from the airport to the hotel, so we figured it would be about a 40-45 minute drive or so. Well what else you have to understand is when overseas anything can happen, and it ended up taking 2-2 1/2 hours. I think we ended up driving through neighborhoods, taking back roads, we turned a lot, and even got stopped by a train. So it was quite the experience, and it was pretty hot and the no air conditioning. So I tried to sleep as much as I could on the bus, which was most of the ride. Then after we finally got here and settled in, I went and ate, which was pretty good food, and then we went for a little jog to get the trip out of us.

That was all yesterday. Today we went and worked out this morning at 11am and got a good blow in. The place we worked out in, I think is the arena we will be wrestling in this weekend as well. The arenas back here are not huge by any means, but they have the crowd right there on you, so it will be pretty fun to wrestle in. Hopefully they can pack the place. After that just came back to the hotel and went and walked around a little bit, and walked over to draculas castle. I guess it was Vlad the Impelars castles back in the 15th or 16th century, or something like that. His fathers name was Vlad Dracul (Dracula), and I guess there were stories written back then creating the myth about Dracula. But it was a pretty cool thing to experience and see. There was a church with a lot of paintings on the inside of it telling the story about Jesus, and pictures of all the apostles. It was pretty cool to see something like that still standing, and somewhat good condition. It was also cool to see what it was built out of, which was pretty much stone and rock, with a stone and rock wall built all the way around the palace. But that was our day today and gonna just relax now and eat here in a little bit. Be back soon with some updates.

As for training it has been going really well. The focus is the world championships, so a lot of my training has been geared toward that. I am going to wrestle in Romania on August 7 and will be leaving tomorrow, so this is a step towards the World Championships, going to get some matches in and fine tune some things, and also it is good to get out there and compete to see where you are at training wise and what things need to be fixed before the worlds. Everyday of training I have been getting better and been working on things I need to put me on top of the podium in September in Turkey.

I will keep everyone posted on how Romania is going when I get there.

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