Why I love wrestling
Ahhh the first day of the wrestling season.
It’s a day I look forward to each and every year. Some of you know me….some of you don’t.
I’ll tell you a little about myself and why I love wrestling. This is a long post so get yourself a hot or cold beverage and read away.
I did wrestle as a youngster maybe 4th grade for the Fostoria YMCA. Unfortunately, I was too big for my age and never even got to wrestle a match that year because there were not other kids my age big enough. So that immediately sent me to the basketball team in 5th grade.
We had just got done with basketball practice early in my eighth grade year at Fostoria St. Wendelin. We were a pathetic basketball team. The coach, a current head coach who I like and respect today, was very intense and so mad at us he whipped basketballs at us in practice. The high school wrestling team was practicing on the mezzanine as I was walking by and going to the lockerroom that day.
Tom Clark the head wrestling coach grabbed me and told me he needed someone for his heavyweight to work with for a few minutes. I stepped on the mat and practiced for awhile. I immediately went home and told my mom I was quitting basketball and joining the wrestling team.
She was crushed. She even offered me $2.50 a game to keep playing, to an eighth grader back in 1981 that was a nice chunk of change. But I didn’t relent. I practiced all season even though all of our matches were cancelled because I was the only wrestler on our team that was able to stay academically eligible that year.
My mom got into the swing of the sport. She knew I had grown to love it and it was something I might be good at. She took me and a sixth grade friend of mine Craig Fournier to tournaments every weekend during the spring throughout Northwest Ohio. I had a pretty good head and arm that took me all the way to the AAU National Finals in Lincoln, Neb. that year in my first year in the sport.
I was hooked.
Went to heavyweight camp at Michigan and found out my freshman year of high school wrestling in the unlimited division that 250-pound freshman can’t head and arm a 330-pound senior.
But I worked hard in the offseason and was a match away from qualifying for state as a sophomore before becoming my school’s first state qualifier as a junior, placing fourth in Class A. The next year heavyweight was capped at 275 pounds so I slimmed down to about 225 or 230 and went 33-0 on my way to winning the Class A state title -- the first state title in any sport at our school.
Then it was on to college and I was lucky enough to get a scholarship to wrestle at Wright State University in Dayton. I knew I was starting over when in my first match at the Ohio Open Indiana’s Todd Balwinski, a two-time Big Ten placer for the Hoosiers, shoved me right into the scorer’s table.
Those four years taught me a lot. It was like starting over I had to deal with injuries, winning and losing wrestleoffs, having dual meets depend on me in the last match of the day and juggling wrestling with academics. I had an average career, never made it to the NCAA tournament, although I beat a few Division I qualifiers and some Division II and III All-Americans. But it gave me the opportunity to wrestle in all sorts of places and experience what it was like to wrestle guys like Olympians Bill Scherr and Mark Coleman and 6-time NCAA champion Carlton Haselrig, who won three NCAA crowns in Division II and Division I.
I graduated with honors and was better for my college wrestling experience although many times I hated it and wondered if it was really worth it.
But then I discovered coaching and teaching kids about the sport that I learned so much from and that had given me so many opportunities. I wanted to give something back to wrestling, which had given me so much.
Luckily I had a terrific mentor in coach Bob Whitman when I began coaching at St. Wendelin in 1992. We had good seasons and bad and happiness and disappointment while coaching. We saw wrestlers grow up from wide eyed freshmen to men ready to go out into the world and make their mark on the world. We helped turn St. Wendelin from a wrestling laughingstock to respectable all without much if any support from the school.
It was nice when we started going to the Catholic Invitational Tournament, we were by far the smallest school that competed there. One of our kids would beat someone from Cincinnati Elder or Columbus DeSales and someone from that school would come up to us and say who are you guys? You’re St. Who? From where? That’s St. Wendelin buddy.
But it’s not all about the kids you send to state or the records you break. For me it was about watching kids giving everything they’ve got on the mat each and everytime they go out there. And after four years, if they’ve learned something from their experiences and are better men for it…everything you’ve done as a coach is worth it.
Now that I think about it, that the day in 1981 when Tom Clark grabbed me and asked me to work out with his wrestlers, changed the course of my life. If it wasn't for him I wouldn't have met so many wonderful people, developed some great friendships and had all of those wonderful experiences I ended up having as coach, a wrestler and a fan of the sport of wrestling.
Tom, I can't thank you enough.
Wrestling News
10 Ashland University wrestlers make finals
Fostoria Focus article on Alpha Weight
Story on Elmwood’s wrestling coach Dave Lee’s 20 year as head coach
Preview articles from The Fostoria Focus on area wrestling teams
Fostoria
St. Wendelin
Hopewell-Loudon
Lakota
Elmwood
Arcadia
It’s a day I look forward to each and every year. Some of you know me….some of you don’t.
I’ll tell you a little about myself and why I love wrestling. This is a long post so get yourself a hot or cold beverage and read away.
I did wrestle as a youngster maybe 4th grade for the Fostoria YMCA. Unfortunately, I was too big for my age and never even got to wrestle a match that year because there were not other kids my age big enough. So that immediately sent me to the basketball team in 5th grade.
We had just got done with basketball practice early in my eighth grade year at Fostoria St. Wendelin. We were a pathetic basketball team. The coach, a current head coach who I like and respect today, was very intense and so mad at us he whipped basketballs at us in practice. The high school wrestling team was practicing on the mezzanine as I was walking by and going to the lockerroom that day.
Tom Clark the head wrestling coach grabbed me and told me he needed someone for his heavyweight to work with for a few minutes. I stepped on the mat and practiced for awhile. I immediately went home and told my mom I was quitting basketball and joining the wrestling team.
She was crushed. She even offered me $2.50 a game to keep playing, to an eighth grader back in 1981 that was a nice chunk of change. But I didn’t relent. I practiced all season even though all of our matches were cancelled because I was the only wrestler on our team that was able to stay academically eligible that year.
My mom got into the swing of the sport. She knew I had grown to love it and it was something I might be good at. She took me and a sixth grade friend of mine Craig Fournier to tournaments every weekend during the spring throughout Northwest Ohio. I had a pretty good head and arm that took me all the way to the AAU National Finals in Lincoln, Neb. that year in my first year in the sport.
I was hooked.
Went to heavyweight camp at Michigan and found out my freshman year of high school wrestling in the unlimited division that 250-pound freshman can’t head and arm a 330-pound senior.
But I worked hard in the offseason and was a match away from qualifying for state as a sophomore before becoming my school’s first state qualifier as a junior, placing fourth in Class A. The next year heavyweight was capped at 275 pounds so I slimmed down to about 225 or 230 and went 33-0 on my way to winning the Class A state title -- the first state title in any sport at our school.
Then it was on to college and I was lucky enough to get a scholarship to wrestle at Wright State University in Dayton. I knew I was starting over when in my first match at the Ohio Open Indiana’s Todd Balwinski, a two-time Big Ten placer for the Hoosiers, shoved me right into the scorer’s table.
Those four years taught me a lot. It was like starting over I had to deal with injuries, winning and losing wrestleoffs, having dual meets depend on me in the last match of the day and juggling wrestling with academics. I had an average career, never made it to the NCAA tournament, although I beat a few Division I qualifiers and some Division II and III All-Americans. But it gave me the opportunity to wrestle in all sorts of places and experience what it was like to wrestle guys like Olympians Bill Scherr and Mark Coleman and 6-time NCAA champion Carlton Haselrig, who won three NCAA crowns in Division II and Division I.
I graduated with honors and was better for my college wrestling experience although many times I hated it and wondered if it was really worth it.
But then I discovered coaching and teaching kids about the sport that I learned so much from and that had given me so many opportunities. I wanted to give something back to wrestling, which had given me so much.
Luckily I had a terrific mentor in coach Bob Whitman when I began coaching at St. Wendelin in 1992. We had good seasons and bad and happiness and disappointment while coaching. We saw wrestlers grow up from wide eyed freshmen to men ready to go out into the world and make their mark on the world. We helped turn St. Wendelin from a wrestling laughingstock to respectable all without much if any support from the school.
It was nice when we started going to the Catholic Invitational Tournament, we were by far the smallest school that competed there. One of our kids would beat someone from Cincinnati Elder or Columbus DeSales and someone from that school would come up to us and say who are you guys? You’re St. Who? From where? That’s St. Wendelin buddy.
But it’s not all about the kids you send to state or the records you break. For me it was about watching kids giving everything they’ve got on the mat each and everytime they go out there. And after four years, if they’ve learned something from their experiences and are better men for it…everything you’ve done as a coach is worth it.
Now that I think about it, that the day in 1981 when Tom Clark grabbed me and asked me to work out with his wrestlers, changed the course of my life. If it wasn't for him I wouldn't have met so many wonderful people, developed some great friendships and had all of those wonderful experiences I ended up having as coach, a wrestler and a fan of the sport of wrestling.
Tom, I can't thank you enough.
Wrestling News
10 Ashland University wrestlers make finals
Fostoria Focus article on Alpha Weight
Story on Elmwood’s wrestling coach Dave Lee’s 20 year as head coach
Preview articles from The Fostoria Focus on area wrestling teams
Fostoria
St. Wendelin
Hopewell-Loudon
Lakota
Elmwood
Arcadia
posted by --J-- at 1:19 PM
5 Comments:
That's quite the story Jamie. I have a similar one. Coach Lee can thank his uncle, who coached me in elementary basketball, for me going out for wrestling. We still want to see you over at Elmwood to work out with Tahy. You can make him your pet project and push him to state placement (a state title would be real nice). You being there would even help Jon Aurand, who is a nice wrestler in his own right.
The article John Montgomery did on Coach Lee was great. Coach Lee is actually 300-140, but either way it is a nice record. He would agree with you that seeing the boys grow into young men is the best part of it all. One thing that gets me about the article though, they always call me "Roger" in the focus. One year I was the person that they interviewed about our team and the story and they did the same thing. Roger is my brother's name, lol. He sure likes it though, lol.
Rob
What ever happened to Tom Clark? The last I heard he was officiating at some major meets, but thats been years ago.
I am happy to report that I am alive and well and living in Noblesville, Indiana a suburb of Indy.
I am still officiating wrestling on the high school, national and international level.
I am married with a 16 year old step-daughter and a 6 year old son.
I am, to say the least, very touched by Jamies blog.
Tom Clark
Hey Boomer it's Hitch, great to hear what your up to these days. We're into the next generation around here with the True's, Falks etc (but there's no Boes boys around anymore:->)
Hey Hitch great to hear from you too. I try to keep up to date on everything via The Courier online edition.
Drop me an email and we will catch up on old times.
tomclarkusa@insightbb.com
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