Staff file photo / Highlights of the UTC playing days of former Mocs football coach Russ Huseman, right, have been among the most noteworthy parts of the weekly MocsVision watch parties during the sports shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.With both wonder and wistfulness, Gerald Zigner watched the grainy black-and-white highlights of his late father Ralph’s outstanding University of Tennessee at Chattanooga wrestling career during the school’s weekly MocsVision Facebook “Watch Party” on April 30.
“Just how powerful he was,” Zigner said of the Mocs’ most successful super heavyweight during the 1970s. “It’s been 10 years since my dad passed away, and I’d never before seen footage of him wrestling. It was both touching and overwhelming.”
Those are at least a couple of the emotions the UTC athletic department surely hoped to deliver when it began its weekly video replays a few weeks ago as a distraction from the coronavirus pandemic.
Beginning on March 19 – which was also exactly one week after the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament and pretty much every other sporting event in this country was either canceled or postponed – the school has shown a past Mocs highlight at 8 p.m. each Thursday on its Facebook page for athletics (facebook.com/ChattanoogaMocs).
This week’s segment will again focus on wrestling’s late 1970s success, the clips coming from 16mm and 8mm film footage with no live audio. The school has added background music and a few graphics, but otherwise, to quote its news release, “it is raw UTC wrestling.”