Wrestling: An Iowa and Family Tradition

Wrestling has always been important for our family. Part of that was living in Iowa, where wrestling’s popularity is similar to basketball in Indiana or hockey in Minnesota. Iowa is the birthplace and home of the legendary Dan Gable, considered the greatest wrestler and wrestling coach of all time. Wrestling was a good sport for me because I was always smaller in size, and the weight classes helped even things out.

Youth Wrestling

I started wrestling in second grade, attending some practices run by the high school coach and a few local Saturday tournaments. I still remember my first tournament, held at our high school. I was the youngest/lightest kid at the tournament, so the announcers called my name first to wrestle, and I didn’t know what to do. The older kids helped get me to the front desk to get my red or green ankle band. I don’t even remember if I won or lost that first match – I was so focused on getting to where I needed to be.

Despite that inauspicious beginning, I had some success over the next several years. I won some 3rd/4th place medals. Eventually, I won some tournaments. Most tournaments were set up in a bracket format, similar to NCAA March Madness basketball. After weigh-ins, the tournament organizers would group the wrestlers into brackets by age and weight and then start hanging up the posters in hallways at the school. All of us kids would crowd around the volunteers as they put up the bracket posters to see whom we would be wrestling that day. If you won the tournament, you took home the bracket to hang on your bedroom wall and a gold medal. One of the local tournaments awarded a trophy for first place instead of a medal which made it even more fun to win. Note – this was in the 1980s, before the era of the participation trophy.

My younger brother started wrestling as well. Our high school needed a place to store an old wrestling mat in the off-season, so Dad volunteered to keep it in our basement so my brother and I could practice. I remember Dad being frustrated at me sometimes down in the basement – “If you wrestled everyone as hard as you do against your younger brother, you would never lose!” Yeah, he was right about me finding a higher level when wrestling my brother as opposed to other kids. But who doesn’t do that?

When I reached middle school, our family started attending the Iowa High School State Wrestling tournament in Des Moines every February. It was an incredible atmosphere at the old Veterans Auditorium, nicknamed “The Barn.” The best wrestlers in the state battled simultaneously on 8 mats. Your head was on a swivel, switching between matches, not wanting to miss something big. We watched relentless scrappers like Tom and Terry Brands from Sheldon, who would go on to win national championships for the Iowa Hawkeyes and later the Olympics. We saw Dan Knight from Clinton and Shane Light from Lisbon become four-time Iowa state champs. We had a blast watching it all with our friends. It was a dream to someday wrestle there against the best amid that excitement.

As I got into junior high, I continued to wrestle and play all the other sports like football, baseball, track, and even basketball. That was how it was in the 1980s before kids started specializing in specific sports so young.

When I was in 8th grade, Iowa held its first little kids’ state wrestling tournament. I ended up taking 3rd place in the 80-pound division, beating some pretty good kids. I remember being so nervous before those matches, unable to eat anything in the morning because of my stomach churning. But that was typical for me. Public speaking makes me nervous still today, but nothing compares to how I felt before I stepped out on the wrestling mat. It’s just you and your opponent. There are no excuses. 

High School

I was slated to wrestle in the 98-pound weight class during my freshman year of high school, the lightest division at that time. The problem was that I only put on about 3 pounds from 8th grade to freshman year. That meant I gave up around 15-20 pounds in every match as my opponents would put on a few more extra pounds after weigh-ins. I went from 3rd in the state to losing and getting pinned by kids I had consistently beaten over the years. It was a tough year, most of all, because I felt I was letting my team down.

My sophomore year was more of the same. I gained some more weight, but the state of Iowa replaced the 98-pound class with a 103-pound class because state officials didn’t think enough kids weighed 98 pounds. My record was a little better, but I still lost more than I was used to. Things finally clicked my junior year when I had a record of 25-12. This was also the year I created a computer program that acted as a wrestling simulation, my most complex program to date.

My senior year was my favorite. We had a great team, and my younger brother joined the team as a freshman. He wrestled 103 pounds, and I followed at 112 pounds meaning that the two of us always started things off for our team. We both won a lot of tournaments as our team excelled.

During the year, an Ivy League college contacted me about possibly wrestling there. The coaches there had seen my name on an Iowa all-state academic wrestling team. It was a surprise to me as I had not been thinking about wrestling after high school. At that time, I planned to go to Iowa State because of its strong computer science program. I had to look in our World Book encyclopedia to find the location of this eastern school.

Our high school team finished with an undefeated 15-0 record in dual matches and won almost every Saturday tournament we entered. We entered the year-end sectionals tournament with high expectations, both for the team and as individuals.

Unfortunately, sectionals didn’t turn out the way we thought. Our team got second place, so we wouldn’t go on to the state dual-team tournament, even though we were undefeated. I lost in the semifinals to a kid I had beaten five times earlier in the year. This loss ended my season and my high school wrestling career. I remember running to the locker room, thinking I had screwed everything up for my team and myself. My dad walked in with tears in his eyes and hugged me, both of us speechless. A former kid from our high school team who was a couple of years older came in to talk with me about ten minutes later. He looked me in the eyes and told me, “This is a big deal to you now, but it’s so small in the big scheme of things. You’re going to go on to do so many other things that this won’t even matter.” I always appreciated that. I remember that conversation more than I do losing the match. 

The good news was that my younger brother did well that day and advanced onto districts the following week. At districts, he won his wrestle-back match to get second place, qualifying him for a trip to Des Moines and the Iowa state wrestling tournament.

I was excited for my brother but felt out of place in the bleachers at Des Moines. I saw my brother and other friends from our team warming up on the mats below. The announcer soon yelled out his traditional “Wrestlers, clear the mats!” This line signaled to everyone that they were ready to start the matches.

The announcer started calling out the names of the 1A 103-pound wrestlers, my brother’s division. And then I heard it – our last name followed by the name of our little school/town. It gave me goosebumps. I turned around to look at Dad, and our eyes locked. We both had big smiles on our faces, maybe a slight tear in our eyes. It was one of the closest moments I ever experienced with Dad – my favorite memory connected to wrestling.

Tradition

I wrestled for a couple of years in college, never having much success. I did not have the physical strength to compete at that level. My brother went on to wrestle at the state tournament two more times and was the all-time school win leader when he graduated. He eventually became the head coach at our high school, helping coach multiple state champions, including a three-timer. My youngest brother wrestled in high school and started on a team that made the state dual-team tournament. When my dad passed away in 2020, my mom created a college scholarship in his name that is given out every year to a wrestler on our high school team.

I am thankful for what wrestling has done for my family and me. It wasn’t always easy, but I know it has much to do with who I am today.