Coach Jones, Martini, and I flew to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Wednesday morning, March 5, 2008. As we neared our hotel room, I noticed the number on the door read ‘717.’ I was born on 7/17. For a split second, I thought, “I am going to win this thing.” I quickly regrouped and told myself there was a lot of work to be done.
Signs were something I always looked for. It made me smile if I glanced down at the time when it was 1:41 or if a song time on my iPod read 1:41. To see my birthdate was a good thing too. I never looked deeply into this. It was just something I had done with all my weight classes since high school. Maybe it was the one superstition I could not shake. Or maybe Ray is right, and I am just a crazy lunatic.
Our first practice of the trip was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. An advantage over the previous season was that I had Martini to wrestle with. During the practice, we thought other wrestlers were scouting us, so neither one of us drilled our best moves. Thinking back, I realize we may have just been paranoid that weekend.
In every live situation (we decided situation wrestling was harder to scout than straight-up live wrestling), Martini beat me. It did not matter if I started with his leg in the air or he started with mine. He scored every time. At first, this weighed heavily on my mind. I soon changed my thought process and decided, “Good, Martini is ready for this tournament.” Thinking that way did not hurt my psyche one bit.
Following our workout, I did a bit more on my own. It was not because I was overweight (the flu had taken care of that), but because I simply wanted to. When I got into my stance, I felt as if I was on the cusp of a great confrontation. I was excited to have the chance to wrestle on one of the eight mats in the impressive facility that was the U.S. Cellular Center and to have a chance at becoming a national champion. A burst of energy flowed through my body. I decided to run ten sprints. It was not enough. I picked up my jump rope and sprinted while simultaneously jumping rope. Once I had burned off the extra energy, I sat down, stretched, and tried to soak it all in. I knew this was my moment to shine. I could not let it slip by. I thought, “I will never be here again.” There was only one problem, it was Wednesday, and the tournament did not start until Friday.
Since we had over thirty-six hours before weigh-ins, and Martini and I were light, we went out to dinner. Both of us ordered grilled chicken and steamed vegetables with a glass of ice water. I always drank a good amount of water two days before a weigh-in.
Martini kept the mood light all day. He constantly cracked me up with random funny lines. The laughter produced an excellent environment to keep us relaxed and loose two days before the tournament began.
Thursday afternoon, our families and friends arrived. It was great to have so much support since I felt all of Iowa would be against me.
Martini and I greeted our families and friends, and then we relaxed. When we checked our weights a few hours later, we learned we only had to lose around two pounds each. At our second workout of the day, both of us lost three pounds in order to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and drink a bottle of water. Then, we started to go through our pretournament rituals.
Almost every wrestler has these to some extent. Mine centered around food. I had to have everything ready for the moment after weigh-ins the following morning. From Thursday until after the tournament, all that I ate was a mixture of granola, walnuts, almonds, dried mango, peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, oranges, and bananas. Besides food, I liked to have a fresh pair of clothes and a clean singlet for every match. With the bag packed, the challenge of falling asleep began. I have found out since that, ironically, trying to stay awake helps me fall asleep. I wish I knew that then. I battled with my thoughts for more than an hour before sleep overtook me.
On Friday morning, I woke with nervous energy filling my mind, body, and spirit. I aimed to harness that and use it to my advantage. Martini and I made the walk to the arena a half-hour before weigh-ins were set to begin. In the intervening time, we joked around and tried to stay calm. The first matches would not start for almost three hours. When our respective weights were made, I ate my preselected foods as if it was any other tournament. Then I relaxed for half an hour before changing into my singlet.
Next on my agenda was warming up to the point of a slight sweat. Watching the facility slowly fill with fans excited me even more. My blood was pumping fast when I heard the arena announcer say, “Will everyone please stand.” I assumed the national anthem would follow. Tragically, I was incorrect.
She announced that Scott Viera had passed away, and my heart went out to him. He was a RIC graduate, a Roger Williams University assistant coach, and a man I respected. He was always kind and encouraging to all wrestlers. My mind raced back to the conference championships, and I was glad I had gone over to him to say hello. During that interaction, he told me he was thankful that I sought him out and apologized for not being able to make the trip to Iowa. He had a look that was instantly recognizable for anyone who had known someone who had died of cancer. When I heard the announcement in Iowa, I said to him softly, “Well, now you can be here.” Then I ran to the warm-up area and tried to block it all out. I would be wrestling in a half hour and had to get my head clear.
While warming up for the second time before the opening round, many things ran through my mind. In an attempt to stay positive, I focused on myself and smiled that I was flu-free. The two question marks that remained were how my knee and chest would hold up. I could only pray. In the moments before any match, I tended to get pretty tense, and this one was no exception. To calm down, I repeated in my head, “I’m the best here. I can do this.” It was a cheap way of giving myself a final confidence boost. Confidence is the key to success, as long as it does not spill over into cockiness. By the time the referee blew his whistle to signal the start of the match against my first opponent, I was ready. The moment I heard that sound, my nervousness vaporized, just as it had in all my previous bouts.
When the 2008 NCAA Division III championships began, I could sense my opponent from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, anxiousness wrestling on his feet. I scored on a fireman’s carry right away. It was nice to be correct in my hypothesis that in Iowa, the wrestlers would not run from me. The first period ended with a 6-1 score in my favor. Then, the match took a hard turn in the other direction.
It was his choice in the second, and he opted for the top. It was an intelligent decision on his part. I was in control from our feet and turned him when I had the top position. For some reason, that simple choice freaked me out. I was not thinking clearly, went into defensive mode, and got ridden out the entire second period. For the final period, I optioned back to neutral. The choice proved to be good when I added to my lead with another takedown. Almost instantaneously, my lackluster riding ability allowed him to escape. Once back on our feet, we were in my domain. Instead of attacking and going for a major decision, I stayed away. This proved to be a terrible strategy, as he scored his first takedown of the match and rode me out until time expired. I was even hit with stalling twice.
On the strength of the opening period, I won 8-5. It was not the impressive first-round domination I was hoping for. One of the New England coaches told me after, “Mike, you’ve got to get out on bottom if you want to win this thing.” I agreed with him, and then I dropped the match from my thoughts and started to think about my quarterfinals opponent. Dwelling on mistakes would do me no good now.
In the first round, Martini was wrestling an opponent who had beaten him earlier in the season by two points. When this second go-around had thirty seconds left, Martini was in that familiar predicament of being down by a couple of points. Martini did what champions do and went for it. A scramble ensued where Martini almost brought his opponent to his back. His Loras College counterpart was too strong and reversed him to score five points.
I returned to our hotel room following Martini's bout and showered, as I tried to do after every match. As Coach Smith used to say about a shower, “It wakes up your nerves.” I threw on some comfortable clothes and briefly conversed with my family. Although for the most part, I kept to myself. It was imperative to stay focused. A little distraction is good, but too much can be counterproductive. Since there were five hours between my first and second matches, I took a nap.
I made sure I woke up two hours before the quarterfinals showdown. Once awake, it was time to refuel. I ate some mango mixture, drank water, and read the letters from Coach Chern, Robbie, and Christina. Then I received a text message from Coach Chern, “Don’t overlook Grawin.”
Travis Grawin was the only other returning All-American in the weight class, wrestling for Luther College in Iowa. He had suffered some bad defeats throughout the year. For that reason, his seed had dropped from two to eight. Regardless, it was odd that we had to wrestle in the quarters. We were the only two proven wrestlers with All-American plaques hanging on our walls.
I told myself, “It sucks for him that he has to wrestle me now because I have to beat everyone. The order doesn’t matter.”
Before the match was set to begin, Coach Jones said something that made a lot of sense, “Build an early lead and don’t let him have a chance to make a comeback. He has a lot of fans here, and you have to make sure they have nothing to cheer about.” Going into a match against an Iowa wrestler in his home state was not something I relished. Home-field advantage can be huge. Ray slapped my hand before stepping on the mat and screamed, “Don’t just beat him, kill ‘im.” That was exactly what I set out to do.
At the onset, I executed a fireman’s carry for four points. The first period ended in my morning match’s identical 6-1 score. Unfortunately, instead of learning from my mistake, I shut down and tried to protect the lead. Once again, this was not a good plan, nor is it ever. It allowed Grawin a chance to breathe when I should have smothered him with an onslaught of attacks. Maybe it was a hangover from my plan at the conference championships. Who knows?
In the second period, Grawin took me down, and I heard chants from the crowd of, “Let’s go, Travis,” ringing loudly in my ears. Taking my foot off the gas pedal did not come back to bite me in the last round, but in this contest, I was on the ropes. Towards the end of a seesaw battle, I found myself up by two points with twenty seconds left. This time, learning from the past, I grabbed a two-on-one Russian armbar. The referee hit me with stalling for the second time anyway. It cut my lead to one with ten seconds left. At the time, I thought, “What the hell did he call that for?” Foolishly, I shot a double leg takedown out of spite and fortunately finished it as time expired to win, 11-8. The takedown in the closing seconds of that match was one of the only times I scored off a double leg in my career.
In my first two matches at nationals, I was called for stalling four times, while in my previous forty-plus matches, I had zero stalling calls. Even if I disagreed with the call, I unwisely let a referee be in a position to decide the outcome of the match. I should have widened the gap between myself and my opponent. As in the first round, my win was not pretty. Nevertheless, the match was over, and it was time to move on. As part of putting the bout behind me, I thought of Yogi Berra’s quote, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” A year before, I had been in the same spot -- the national semifinals.
While walking towards my family after the Grawin match, I thought, “Well, I’m an All-American again. That’s good, I guess.” A spot in the semis guaranteed a top-six finish in the tournament. Almost as soon as the thought entered my mind, I understood it was not okay for me. If I had stopped there, I would have been disappointed. A national title was the only thing, at that point, that would have allowed me to leave the sport with my head up.
The next step in my journey was to shed the weight I had added throughout the day. The damage added up to two pounds, even with the one-pound allowance for consecutive weigh-ins. I threw on a lot of clothes and started the process all wrestlers hate, cutting weight. Since Martini was about to wrestle his second match, I jumped rope while cheering him on.
Regrettably, he was beaten by his Delaware Valley opponent and became a spectator.
I worked out for another half hour. It was the easiest weight-cutting of my career. I constantly told myself, “This is the last time you will ever have to do this.” I repeated three words I heard from champion boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. during one of his TV appearances, “Dedication, hard work.”
Four pounds of fluids came out of my body with no problem. That meant an extensive meal was coming my way. It consisted of two bottles of water and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
The physical aspect of the day was over, yet there was still work to be done. As Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear….” Coach Jones had film on my semifinals opponent, Steve Hult from New York University, and I watched it that Friday night. The tape confirmed what I already knew; my adversary was an outstanding defensive wrestler and brutal from the top position. The game plan for the semis was to attack him until he could not breathe. I was confident in my ability to score takedowns. It would just take time.
The semifinals had caused me much heartache in the past. The best wrestling in any tournament usually occurs in that round. Once in the finals, the pressure mounts, and wrestlers tend to compete cautiously, which sometimes makes for a boring conclusion. During the 2007-2008 season, I successfully combated my semifinals demons. Now, on this grand stage, last years’ failure was an unwelcomed memory. What I needed was reassurance, and I re-read the notes I received before nationals to get it.
Reading the letters for the tenth time, I realized how loved I was. Many people tried to help me win, and I was lucky to have such beautiful people in my life.
I then located the sheet Coach Jones had compiled with all the wrestlers in my weight class. I crossed off all of the quarterfinals losers. There were only four names left that night: mine and Hult’s and the other semifinalists, Niles Mercer and Jason Adams. Before getting in bed, I packed my bag for one match. The winners of the semis had a long wait until the finals.
One hundred and sixty wrestlers qualified for the 2008 NCAA Division III Wrestling Championships. [Footnote 15: 180 wrestlers now qualify since the implementation of the regional format in 2013.] Half of those wrestlers make it to the second day to earn All-American honors, while the others lose two matches that first day and are eliminated. This sets up potential problems. Once a wrestler’s season is over, they want to let loose and party, understandable after over five months of hard work. The problem was that too many now-eliminated wrestlers clustered together to party on one of the upper floors in the hotel I was staying. When a drunken wrestler decided to do pull-ups on the sprinkler system at 3:30 A.M., the pipe snapped, setting off the fire alarms throughout the hotel.
I was awakened by the most annoying buzzing noise combined with an irritating automated voice demanding the evacuation of the building. I thought I was dreaming. This could not be happening the night before the biggest matches of my life. As it turns out, I was not dreaming. The point was driven home when my brother Steve knocked on my door. He had come to help get everything I needed out of the room. I packed my bag and unhappily wandered down eight flights of stairs to wait in a hallway until the alarm stopped. It was too cold to go outside, and I was exhausted.
For thirty minutes, I sat on the concrete floor along with drunken wrestlers before the alarm ceased. I told myself it was going to be okay, and nothing was going to stop me from winning. I took it as another barrier to breakthrough. Back in my room, I stripped down and got into bed. Then, I heard it again, “May I have your attention please, may I have your attention please, this is a fire emergency, please evacuate the building.” This time, when my mom knocked on the door, I lost my cool, “Screw it, I’m staying in bed. If it’s a real fire, call me.” After years of working for this chance, I was being robbed of sleep on the eve of my final showdown.
The whole ordeal had taken over an hour, and I did not get back to sleep for another hour beyond that. While lying in bed, I thought about how nothing had ever been easy in my career, so why should the last matches be any different? That worked to a point. What ultimately restored my confidence was the thought that my semifinals opponent was also staying in the same hotel. To this day, I do not know if that was technically true, but the idea calmed me down. I fell back to sleep at 5:30 A.M. with the same goal I had all along, winning a championship. “I would have won if that damn fire alarm didn’t go off” would not be an excuse.
When I woke up on Saturday morning, I tried as best as I could not to think about the overnight debacle. I glanced at my planner and saw what I had written on my calendar months before in the March 8 spot: “Wake up nothing, go to bed a national champion.” That was the plan, and I was sticking to it.
It was time.
I woke up light, so I drank a bottle of water and ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before weigh-ins, refueling as early as possible. On the second day of nationals, instead of getting two hours of recovery time after weigh-ins, we would get only one.
In the hour before the match, my thoughts traveled back in time. Steve Hult was a name I knew from my high school days, and when I saw that he had come back to wrestling, I figured our paths would eventually cross. Hult was going to be my make-or-break moment, and I knew it.
As the match was set to begin and the foam mats compressed beneath my feet, I thought, “Here I am again. Relax and wrestle. This is where dedication and hard work will pay off.”
The whistle sounded, and I went on the offensive. In my previous two matches, I tanked in the second and third periods. I was determined not to let that happen again. As soon as we clinched, I felt his strength and knew my fireman’s carry would not be effective. I turned to my speed, the dart single. On three occasions, the shot looked promising, but his defense proved too strong each time. He tied me up, and we had stalemate after stalemate. Since Hult did not take a shot in the first period, he was hit with a stall call. His way to take wrestlers down was off his defense. As the first period drew to a close, I had Hult on his butt. He countered by locking through my legs. Team RIC thought we had the two. The referees did not. That call can go either way, and in this instance, it went in my opponent’s favor. At the end of the first, the score stood 0-0.
We moved to the second, with the choice falling to Hult, who deferred the starting position for choice in the third. Before I even looked to my corner for my coaches’ advice, I decided to choose the bottom. The game plan going in had been to select neutral, though when that was formulated, I figured at decision time I would be winning. Now with a tie, I had to adapt to the situation and get the first point. Ray, who was coaching me along with Jones, had similar notions, and when I pointed down, he screamed, “You better get up then.” Coach Jones was entirely against this; however, the ultimate choice was mine.
Hult rode me out the entire two-minute period as Ray’s words fell by the wayside, and for a split second, I thought of Yogi again.
At the end of the second period, the score was still 0-0, although Hult had accumulated a full two minutes of riding time. In essence, he was leading, 1-0. My riding ability was inadequate in comparison. We were mirroring the match I had with Keith Sulzer at Midlands in December. At the end of that match’s second period, the score was 2-2, and Sulzer had also had a riding point firmly in his possession. Before the final period with Sulzer, my mindset had been to let him up and attempt to take him down at the end, ride him out and force overtime. That approach had not worked.
In the national semifinals against Hult, I was in that elusive “zone,” where thoughts give way to actions. I coached myself in my head, “Let him up and take him down twice to win this match. This is it; this is your moment.” There was no other option. I had to do it. Then I held up my hands in a diamond shape. It signaled to the referee that I would let my opponent up and give him a point. Sometimes a step back is the only way forward.
I was consumed with the idea of scoring a takedown. Hult continued in his defensive style and was banged with stalling again. The second stall call earned me a point, making it 2-1, Hult. At that juncture, his riding point could not be erased.
I continued with an offensive attack, took a shot that Hult was apparently ready for, and found myself trapped in a front headlock. That was precisely where I did not want to be. Hult grabbed my foot and pulled down, forcing my knee in the opposite direction of the natural bend. Fortunately, it did not lock my knee out. The referee stopped the match due to the potentially dangerous position. If the referee had not made that call, it would have been over. Hult was going to score, and despite the potential danger, another official might not have made the same decision. Regardless of how hard one trains how prepared one is, the fates may sometimes have different ideas. In this instance, they were on my side.
At the start of the next whistle, I was on Hult quickly. A miniature scramble ensued, ending with me controlling a front headlock. Right away, I went for my go-behind-drag, got there, threw my reverse leg in, and locked up a merkle position. It was the exact spot Andrew Lacroix and I were in at the 2006 Springfield tournament. Unconsciously, I remembered what the referee had told me then and locked Hult’s head and arm between my hands. As soon as the merkle was secured, the two points were mine. When the whistle blew, signaling that we were out of bounds, the clock read 0:44.
At this point, I was faced with another decision. I would win if I could ride him out for the remaining time. The main area I focused on improving over the past two seasons had been my riding ability, and in that time, I had made tremendous progress. Yet, in this situation, to attempt to ride him out did not enter my mind. If I had gotten reversed, Hult would have been heading to the national finals. The plan was to cut him loose and take him down again to win. If he was going to beat me, I wanted it to be in my best position. The choice gave me essentially forty-four seconds to score the two. If not, I would have another minute of overtime. [Footnote 16: Another two minutes as of the 2022 season.] A tied match was fine with me. I had prepared for that. It all added up to me making that diamond shape again.
Now the score was 3-3.
I took a few more shot attempts and found myself in the now-familiar front headlock position with Hult in control again. Not wanting to repeat the last potentially dangerous situation, I went for the arm drag Florian had taught me five years earlier. It was executed with most of our bodies out of bounds, save for Hult’s pinky finger, which was still in. Moments later, as the final seconds ticked away, I was awarded the two points.
The win was easily the biggest of my career. On the walk back to my corner, I held up a finger and repeated, “One more.” Coach Jones was thrilled and said the line back to me, picking me up in a hug. Ray received an emphatic hand slap.
I was in the national finals.
I thought, “Now, I cannot finish any worse than second in the country.” Promptly, I dismissed the thought and reminded myself why I was there, “No, Mike, it’s one or nothing.” I had come this far, and I was not about to settle.
The other semifinal between Adams and Mercer was concluding. To my surprise, Jason Adams from Augsburg College in Minnesota emerged as my final foe.
Once I knew who was to be my opponent, I wanted to greet my family and Coach Lore. There were tears in their eyes, despite the massive grin on my face. The match had been very nerve-racking for them. I hugged everyone, my embrace with Coach Lore unexpectedly the longest. His eyes were almost dried by then, and his coaching mind took over. “What were you thinking, choosing bottom against a kid like that?”
My response is lost somewhere in the fabric of time; all I can recall is the joy I felt. What trumped the feeling was that the tournament was not over. I knew I could enjoy my accomplishment for only a few more moments, and then I would have to put it behind me.
My family would have more than eight hours to kill before I wrestled my last match. There is always a lot of downtime at wrestling tournaments, and while I do not know everything my family did during that time, I know they were very anxious and felt the pressure too.
The parade of All-Americans was set to start at 6:30 P.M., and it was only 11:30 A.M. I planned to be back in the arena by six. In the time between, I relaxed as best I could. Now, the sheet Coach Jones had made had two more Xs. I decided to give Christina a call, and before we hung up, she gave me the same advice she had a year before – to watch a funny movie.
It was a good idea. I needed to take my mind away from wrestling for a bit. I had planned for this situation before leaving Providence, and As Good as it Gets with Jack Nicholson was with me in a portable DVD player. That movie always cracked me up, and this time, it did too. If someone who did not know me walked into that room, they would have never guessed I would be wrestling for an NCAA title a few hours later. When Jack Nicholson’s last joke played, it was still hours before six, and I had planned to take a nap. Once again, sleeping and anxiety collided.
Instead, I wandered into Coach Jones’s room to talk with Ray and former teammate and coach, Keith Nelson. The topic of conversation turned to what color singlet I was going to wear in the finals. The maroon singlet was my first choice as it would have brought closure to my career, maroon having been my high school color. Then Coach Jones reminded me Augsburg’s color was maroon. I thought, “Well, I am going for the gold. I might as well wear it.” Even though I knew the color of my singlet would not change the match’s outcome, when I went to pack up my bag, I realized all three of my gold singlets were used.
Sometimes even a graduate student vying for a national championship needs his mom.
At 3:15, I knocked on my parent’s door and asked my mom if she could have my singlet cleaned by 5:30. She responded as I knew she would, “Absolutely, Michael. Is there anything else I can do?” She hand-washed it and dried it with a hairdryer. It was ready precisely on time. You cannot beat a mother’s love.
In the meantime, I ate what seemed like my hundredth peanut butter and jelly sandwich and got back in bed with plans to sleep for an hour. That would give me enough time to pack my bag before heading down to the arena. Napping was no more manageable this time. A million thoughts ran through my head, and filtering the negative ones out became a nuisance. My mind continually wavered back and forth until I somehow dozed off.
A few minutes later, I was awakened by a recognizable noise, followed by, “May I have your attention please, may I have your attention please, this is a fire emergency please evacuate the building.” What could I do other than laugh? This time the hotel was only resetting its system. Falling back to sleep was out of the question, though. I was off my feet and was as rested as I could be without sleeping. That brought me some peace of mind, though my nerves were making my feet and hands quite clammy.
Minutes before six, I decided to reread the letters from Robbie, Christina, and Coach Chern for the last time. Their absences saddened me. Then again, I knew that I would not have had those notes to read if they were there. That cheered me up.
It was time to enter the U.S. Cellular Center by myself and get mentally prepared.
On the walk into the arena, I was amazed to see the finals mat raised on a platform. “This is no joke,” ran through my head. I had left the facility hours earlier, and a lot had happened since then. All the bouts were finished except for the finals in each of the ten weight classes. In the third-place match, I learned Hult beat Grawin, my quarterfinals opponent. Now I knew that if I won the finals against Adams, I would have beaten the country's number two, three, and four wrestlers in consecutive matches. There were only seven minutes of work separating me from that storybook ending.
Getting dressed for the last competitive match of my career had the potential to be mentally draining. Not to let my emotions get the best of me, I concentrated on the little things more than ever. I made sure there were no wrinkles in my socks by pulling them up slowly. I slipped into my gold singlet, shorts, and the long-sleeved shirt from a former teammate, Sean Miele. I strapped headgear to the shoulder strap of my singlet and pulled Brian Hoyt’s kneepad onto my right leg. Finally, I started the process of putting on Colin Smith’s shoes. I thought of many instances where I heard the term “Lacing them up for the last time.” As I pulled my laces tightly, I understood I was not only wrestling for a national championship; I was wrestling my final match.
Once dressed, I lined up with the seventy-nine other All-Americans for the parade. The ceremony could not have been over quickly enough. Never in my life had I been more ready to wrestle. At the same time, I remembered the year before when I had been envious of the finalists. Now my mind was not on how lucky I was to be in the finals, only on how to win.
With the ceremony’s conclusion, the non-finalists dispersed to their seats to watch, and the finalists warmed up. It was there where I made my last energy packet. Having the flu during the conference championships encouraged me to use them, and at nationals, I was simply continuing the trend I had set two weeks prior. As soon as I took one sip, the cup slipped out of my hand and spilled onto the floor. I laughed and thought, “Guess someone up there thinks it’s a bad idea to drink that.” Earlier in my career, something as simple as that could have rattled me. This time, I simply reassured myself that the packet was not the reason why I had won.
I took part in a drilling session with the defending 133-pound national champion, Dave Morgan, from King’s College in Pennsylvania. When we were done, I had a lot of nervous energy left, so I ran a few sprints to calm down.
There was a loud cheer as Seth Flodeen from Augsburg won the 125-pound national title via the pin. Augsburg had plenty of fans who had made the drive from Minnesota. When it was Morgan’s turn, he won in overtime against his opponent from Wartburg College.
Then, it was my time.
Coach Jones and Ray escorted me to the holding area opposite Adams. When the announcer called my name, I ran up the stairs and onto the mat. The feeling was incomparable and electrified me even more. Anytime a bad thought entered my mind, I did what had been working all weekend -- countered the negative with a positive.
While stripping down to my singlet, Coach Jones and Ray arrived in my corner. On my way to the center of the blue mat for the pre-match handshake, I took a look around and thought, “Wow.”
The final match of the 141-pound weight class that season began like every other one, with a whistle. In contrast to the national semifinals, I felt stronger than Adams during our first clinch. Due to the slight edge in strength, I assumed my fireman’s carry would be effective. Regrettably, for me, Augsburg had coached their wrestler well. Every time I set up for the move, Adams threw a wrench into my well-oiled takedown machine. Without adapting to my new situation as I had done with Hult, I repeatedly went for the fireman’s throughout this match.
When prepping for the championships, relying solely on that shot was something I tried to avoid. Foolishly, I succumbed to the common finals’ tendency and wrestled too cautiously.
Cautious wrestling is not always ill-advised. One good shot attempt that results in a takedown is undoubtedly better than ten that do not, and if Adams had scored the first points, my strategy would have certainly changed. The plan with no score was to capitalize off his mistakes. Adams opened the door for me on his first shot attempt. His body movement right before the explosion tipped me off. I countered by tossing him. Recognizing his mistake immediately, Adams recovered in time to roll through back to his feet for no points.
I had let a key opportunity slip through my fingers.
Following the throw and the shouts of “wow” from the crowd, the excitement waned until there were just thirty seconds left in the first period. Adams took another shot which I countered with a front headlock. This was the position I wanted to be in. I attempted my go-behind-drag and spun behind him. He would not concede the points and countered with a roll. Anticipating this, I caught him on his back. He was flat for two seconds. In those two brief seconds, I was elated, thinking the national title was mine. By the time the official circled around us, Adams had rolled through to his stomach. I had the two points for the takedown and nothing more.
The match would continue.
The instant we rolled through, I stopped thinking about what could have been and planned my next attack. I finished the period in the top position with a two-point lead.
Adams deferred the choice in the second period to me. Immediately after my semifinals performance, Coach Jones had made me promise to choose neutral when this time came. If the finals match was scoreless as in the semis at this juncture, I would have made the same decision as I did then and chosen to go down, despite my coach’s pleadings. While I still think I could have gotten out, since I had a lead in the finals, I chose the neutral position and conceded the point.
The whistle blew to start the second period. We had a minor scuffle where I threw my reverse leg in and locked up his head and arm for two more points. Right after the referee awarded the takedown, Adams high-legged over and grabbed my leg. We struggled for around thirty seconds until we were out of bounds. I had no control. The official granted Adams an escape to make the score 4-1. However, the whole time I fought his reversal attempt, I built riding time. When we were signaled out of bounds, I had amassed a 1:01 advantage. If nothing else changed, I would get the point for riding and win by a score of 5-1.
With about ten seconds left in the second period, Adams surprised me with a slick shot and got my leg in the air with ease. I went for a counter that had served me well in the past, the knee slip, and that allowed me to wiggle out. It is not a move that I was ever taught, just something I did naturally. Adams was unaware of how to counteract my counter and the second period ended at 4-1.
The 2008, 141-pound national championship now moved into its final stage. The referee pointed to my opponent, indicating his choice in the last period. Wisely for him, he chose down and escaped in less than ten seconds. I failed to tighten the grip on the riding point. The miscue on my part made the score 4-2 with 1:53 left. If he took me down and rode me for nine seconds, he would force overtime.
That possibility made me wrestle even more cautiously than I had in the opening. Unlike when I was waiting for him to make a mistake, in this instance, it was to ensure that I did not falter. My objective at that point was to hold on. Trying to hold on at the end of matches is a misguided strategy; this was another instance at nationals where I did not wrestle to the best of my ability.
As the announcers pointed out in the third period, Adams was challenging. It was no longer a foregone conclusion that my name would be out in front on the championship bracket. For about a minute, I was trapped in a front headlock. Due to my many battles with my former coach Florian, I was comfortable in the position. In the back of my mind, the scare with Hult also lingered.
What I should have done was drag out to score two more points, sealing the match. What I did was hold onto Adam’s elbow with all my might, keeping my head below the center of his chest. As long as my head was there, he could not score. He made many unsuccessful attempts to tap my knee, spin behind and grab my ankle. In the closing moments, his grip loosened, and the position was reversed. Once in control, I squeezed him as tight as my arms allowed me to.
When the final buzzer sounded with a 5-2 score in my favor, the first thing I did was point to my family, then to the New England fans’ section. When my arm was raised triumphantly, I felt what Malcolm X wrote, “I experienced a tingling up my spine as I’ve never had before or since….”
I will never forget the sound of the words which followed the buzzer, as a female voice burst through the arena, “The championship goes to the number one spot, Michael Bonora, Rhode Island.” I had visualized and dreamed of that moment for so long, and now it was here.
The national title was mine.
A few months later, when asked, “How did you feel standing in the middle of the mat like that?” I thoughtlessly replied, “Amazing.” What I should have said and what I meant was, “Like everything had been worth it.” The moment was worth every ounce of sacrifice, pain, sweat, and tears. All of the occasions when my fate had hung by a thread went right out of my head. The joy I felt was ninety percent happiness and ten percent relief. This was the exact opposite of every other win of my entire career. Pride filled my body as it hit me: I did exactly what I set out to do. It was my moment. I was fulfilled.
The rest rushed by in a muted blur. The Iowa referee congratulated me. I saw my two aunts in the stands and pointed to them. I turned to shake the Augsburg coach’s hand, but he was already walking down the platform, so I bee-lined to my corner where he congratulated me later. As I jogged towards Ray and Coach Jones, my emotions were off the charts. Our embrace was low-key, a classic wrestler and coaches’ clench, but no less meaningful for its simplicity.
A volunteer from Coe College, the school hosting the championships, sought me out and said he had to follow me until the end of the tournament. He was my “shadow.” The NCAA tested every titlist for illegal substances, and at some point, I would have to produce a urine sample. For some reason, the thought gave me the creeps. I knew I had not taken steroids or cheated in any other way, but I was just recently sick with the flu and had ingested plenty of cold medicine. Now all I could do was hope that none of it contained anything illegal.
By that time, all I wanted to do was find my family in the stands. My shadow and I were heading up there when I noticed that I did not have my credentials. All wrestlers and coaches had been issued a card to allow them to go wherever they wanted in the arena. I figured that it would not matter as any security guard would recognize I was a competitor. On the way up the stairs, I was stopped by a woman who asked for my pass. I told her I had left it in my bag and was going up to see my family. “You’re not allowed passed me without it,” was the response. My shadow said, “He just won a national title; it’s pretty clear he’s a wrestler.” None of our explanations satisfied her, and we were stuck in limbo between the first and second levels. I said to myself, “This isn’t going to bother me now.”
My family came down to meet me on the staircase platform, and when the embraces and congratulations subsided, I informed them of the impending drug test. Steve said, “Someone thinks you did steroids. Look at you, that’s a joke.”
It was time to get back down to the floor for my turn on the award stand, along with the other seven All-Americans at 141. Waiting in my seat, I had to bite my lip to control my joy.
And then, almost too quickly, I was on top of the podium. A ton of photographs were snapped, and I glanced to my left and right and noticed that this time, I stood the highest. This moment was almost as fulfilling as the seconds immediately following the final buzzer. After all the years I had pictured and imagined those experiences, both were everything I had hoped. All the times I told myself to go a little further because one day my hard work would be rewarded were now validated.
With my trophy and bracket in hand, I sat back down to watch the last matches of the 2008 Division III season. At the same time, my mind was reflecting on my season and career. I smiled when I thought about how often, as a young boy, I used to wish I was a WWF champion. “It can’t be better than this,” I told myself. My thoughts then turned towards Christina’s letter in which she had written, “Win it for yourself. Everyone is already so proud of you.”
The next joy was the champions’ photo in which I had longed for many years to be included. At first, my dream might have been satisfied with a New Jersey state champions’ image. When I thought about it, I realized that if I had achieved that goal, perhaps, the 2008 national champions’ picture would have a different face in the 141-pound spot.
I was the last wrestler to finish and pass the drug test at 10:00 P.M. Coach Jones and I made our way to a celebratory dinner with my family and friends. A few speeches were made, so I decided to make one. Despite being a national champion on the wrestling mat, I found out that I could add public speaking to a long list of shortcomings. It did not matter. The day was one of the best in my memory bank.
What You Can Take Away from Chapter 12:
It is human to be nervous when doing things that are important to you.
Your best moves might not work in your biggest matches; you need other options.
Bad things happen when you protect the lead.
Do not change how you wrestle in the finals.
Taking steroids or any other performance-enhancing drugs is cheating, and one way or another, it will cost you in the end.