The State College area could have been called Not-so-Happy Valley.

After the 2001-2002 season, the Penn State wrestling team had little to boast about.

The team's lone All-American was then-junior Doc Vecchio, it had just come off a 35th-place finish at the NCAA tournament in Albany N.Y., and had not had a winning season since the 1999 campaign, when it finished fourth at Nationals.

The future began to look brighter for the Nittany Lions when the class of 2006 began to take shape under the hands of Troy Sunderland and his coaching staff.

"They bought what we were selling," Sunderland said of getting the blue-chip recruits.

The coaching staff must include some wonderful pitchmen because, while there was clearly not much to sell, some would argue that the Penn State recruiting class might have been the best in the country.

After the success of the 2002-2003 season when the Lions garnered four All-Americans in senior Mark Becks and juniors Scott and Josh Moore and Pat Cummins, Penn State placed third at this year's conference tournament and sixth at the NCAA championships, there is much more for the coaching staff to sell.

The recent success adds to a winning tradition at Penn State. With the 1953 squad, the university is still the only eastern school to boast a national championship team.

The athletic facilities are impressive to most high school athletes, while the notoriety of the Big Ten Conference also helps.

Nate Galloway is one of the new freshmen who have played a vital role in the resurgence of the program. He said academics help bring in wrestlers. Galloway said one of the reasons he joined the team was the coaching staff.

"I was confident they were going to do whatever it took to get a national championship," Galloway said.

Galloway acknowledged that being from the State College area, where he was teammates with current Lion freshmen Jeremy Hart and Matt Storniolo helped answer the question of whether or not he would put on a blue and white uniform.

The recent success might not affect the class of 2007, which has already gotten letters of intent from Harrisburg's Phillip Davis, Camp Hill's Tim Haas and Fair Haven, N.J.'s Bryan Heller.

However, that does not mean the success will not help bring in current high school athletes in the future.

Meanwhile, Sunderland stressed that one of the strengths of the program is that it can take talent like the Moores and Cummins, who had not won state championships, and mold them into All-Americans. That is just one more thing the coach can sell to recruits on their visit to Happy Valley.