All for One : Wrestling Is an Individualistic Sport Covering Wide Variety of Experiences, Good and Strange

Tom Malich thought he had heard every story when it came to wrestlers not making weight. But when one of his Kennedy High wrestlers weighed in six pounds over the limit the morning of his match, the 20-year veteran coach could only laugh at the explanation.

“We always want to be on our weight the night before,” Malich said. “And this kid was right on it. But the next morning. . . . six pounds over.

“Now I know why he’s over [because he gorged himself the night before], but when I asked him what happened, he says, ‘Coach, all I had was an orange and some water.’

“I laughed and asked him if he ate a six-pound orange,” Malich said. “We now tell our wrestlers to stay away from six-pound oranges before a match.”

Welcome to the world of prep wrestling, where an athlete’s body is tested on the mat and at the dinner table.

“This sport is not like any sport in the Southern Section,” said Malich, who’s also president of the Orange County Wrestling Coaches Assn. “It can be brutal. It can be humbling. It can be inspiring. But the bottom line is that it’s a great challenge.”

For Mike Bigrigg, a 189-pound wrestler at defending state champion Calvary Chapel, the individuality of the sport is the lure as well as the challenge.

“It’s the competitiveness and the one-on-one aspect of the sport I love,” said Bigrigg, 17, who finished third at the Southern Section Division I finals last year. “I played football for two years, but I do nothing but wrestling now.

“In football, you have to rely on too many people. Not in wrestling. It’s just me and nobody else. Wrestling has taught me how to find a way to win, and I know it will help me later no matter what I’m doing.”

Bill Clark, assistant commissioner of the Southern Section, has overseen wrestling for 19 years. Of all the sports the section offers, Clark has a special affinity for wrestling.

“There’s no sport like it,” Clark said. “These athletes are baring their souls out there on the mat. “It’s one of the greatest of the individual sports. It’s an aggressive sport that tests self-reliance.”

Malich has seen this test of self-reliance many times during his coaching career. Last year, his top wrestler, Richard Feistman, sustained a two-inch gash over his left eye during a match at the section Division II finals.

“There was blood everywhere. The funny thing is that when Richard got the cut, he thought it was the other guy who was bleeding. So when they would tie-up, he would rub his forehead into the other guy’s face trying to get the blood off,” Malich said.

“But when the ref called an injury timeout, I told Richard that he was the one bleeding, and that if he didn’t win this match fast, he could lose because he was bleeding way too much. So we piled the Vaseline on the wound and he went back out there and pinned the guy.

Feistman needed nine stitches to close the cut.

“That’s wrestling, and things like that happen all the time,” Malich said.

Irvine Coach John Phillips said he tries to pass along to his wrestlers the lessons he learned from the sport in his youth.

“I took a lot of pride working out hard in practice. It’s almost a farmer’s attitude,” said Phillips, whose team has been Sea View League champion four consecutive years. “You can’t be lazy. And if you work hard and are up for the challenge of the sport and you stick with it, it will teach you great lessons that you’ll carry for life.”

It’s common for Phillips to turn up the thermostat in the Vaqueros’ wrestling room. At the end of a two-hour practice session, moisture beads up on the windows.

“I only turn up the heat after the freshmen leave,” said Phillips, laughing. “It’s difficult to explain why someone would put themselves through all of this. For me. I wrestled four years in high school and four in college. And when I look back at those years and think about all the hard work and little recognition I got, I think the only reason I put myself through it all was because of the values I got from wrestling.”

Anaheim Coach Joe Mark said from the conditioning programs to the practice sessions to the meets themselves, wrestling stands alone among high school sports.

“In most sports, like baseball or football, there’s a lot of standing around during practice. Not so in wrestling,” Mark said. “Our practice sessions are intense. We work on the technical aspects of wrestling, but my kids prefer to go one-on-one with each other.

“I remember when the Droughns brothers [Reuben and Robert] would wrestle during practice. We’d have wars in this [wrestling] room. It seems it would always turn into a fight between the two brothers and we would have to pull them apart. It was actually a very nasty takedown group I had.

“I coached both football and wrestling. Football is a tough sport and it’s certainly a lot more glamorous than wrestling. But wrestling is different. It’s much nastier.”

The sport can be nasty at times, but also quite beneficial.

Santa Ana Coach Scott Glabb started at Santa Ana eight years ago. Then, 25 kids came out for wrestling. This season, there are more than 80 out for the team. His Saints are winners, with five consecutive league championships and three state finalist last year.

“Wrestling is a tough sport,” Glabb said. “But what’s more important is that it builds integrity, character, honesty and moral values. I can’t tell you how much the sport has turned lives around here.”

Tony Perez was the big surprise for the Saints last year. A senior, Perez took second at the state meet at 103 pounds. Perez, who also runs cross-country, started wrestling the summer before his freshman year.

“I used to come in [the Santa Ana wrestling room] and wrestle. It was tough, but I kept coming back,” Perez said. “It was different. It made me work hard and set goals. My goal last year was to place at state. This year I want to win it.”

Senior Froilan Gonzalez said his introduction to wrestling came when a Santa Ana football coach told him he should give it a try when football season ended.

“Back then, I was up to no good. I was always in trouble, my grades were really bad and I got kicked out of football because my GPA was so low,” Gonzalez said. “When I went out for wrestling, I wasn’t planning on sticking to it. But after awhile, I started to like it.”

Gonzalez, who wrestles at 125 pounds, said after wrestling awhile, he began to set goals and discovered hard work does pay off.

“My schoolwork improved and I got my GPA up to a 2.9,” he said. “It was all because of wrestling. It keeps me out of trouble and it makes me look to the future. And maybe I can set an example for other young wrestlers, that if I can do it, they can too.”

Others have their own reasons for turning to wrestling.

Calvary Chapel senior Josh Saul is the Eagles’ 215-pounder. Last season, he took eighth at the state finals. He has been wrestling since the seventh grade, when a friend got him into the sport.

“I love the intensity and toughness [of wrestling],” Saul said. “There’s an incredible amount of physical exertion, thinking and strategy.”

Saul said he has been fortunate when it comes to injuries. A couple of bloody noses and ruptured bursa in his right knee. “It’s not as dangerous as some might think.”

In terms of injuries, perhaps not; however, there are other risks.

While football coaches don’t often ask offensive linemen to lose weight, it’s common for wrestlers to use all sorts of unorthodox methods in attempts to make their weight class--or the one below it.

Like boxing, wrestling is organized by weight classes. In all, there are 14 classes, from 103 pounds to 275 and above. Each weight class can be separated by anywhere from five to 12 pounds.

Before the section banned rubber suits, wrestlers would often bundle up in them and try to sweat off the extra pounds. Today, wrestlers attempt to lose weight--cutting weight is the term they use--by dieting and exercising.

“Cutting weight is the toughest aspect of the sport,” Laguna Hills Coach Cliff Jarmie said. “And coaches have to take a lot of the blame for the bad reputation wrestling has gotten because of coaches encouraging their wrestlers to cut weight.

“There are some coaches out there who aren’t educated about nutrition. I’ve been at matches where I’ve sat next to a coach who told his kid that if he wants to make weight, he can’t eat or drink anything for the next 36 hours. It was disgusting.”

Mike Quesnel, 17, a senior at Laguna Hills, will be wrestling in the 160-pound weight class. At the moment, he weighs 175.

“I’ve been eating regular food, but once we started working out, I started watching what I ate,” Quesnel said. “But I should get down in a few weeks.”

Quesnel said cutting weight is all part of the sport, and in fact, is what separates it from the others.

“It’s a hard sport. The workouts, the matches, the cutting weight, but that’s why it’s the [best] sport. It’s just me. If I don’t do it, it’s nobody’s fault but mine. I can’t blame anybody else.”

Dr. James Feld of Irvine has treated wrestlers who have had problems with cutting weight.

“Personally, I don’t think cutting weight is a good practice,” Feld said. “These kids are still growing and it can lead to some long-term problems like heart conditions. They’re at risk of becoming hypoglycemic and they start losing muscle, especially when they already have low body fat.”

Calvary Chapel’s John Azevedo, who is starting his ninth year as head coach of the defending state champions, said cutting weight is not a problem if one develops the correct eating habits.

“It really comes down to eating the right foods,” Azevedo said. “All we’re trying to do is to get them to eat like their mothers have told them: lots of veggies and fruit.”

Azevedo said it’s unfortunate some coaches are not educated about nutrition and diet and are teaching kids the wrong ways to lose weight.

“Cutting weight has to be done over a period of time,” he said. “A lot of these coaches and kids think they have to starve themselves, but that doesn’t work.

“What your basically asking the kid to do is give up all those Cokes, pizza and cheeseburgers, and they think that’s really tough. It’s not tough. It’s eating right. It’s healthy.”

But Azevedo admitted the practice of cutting weight isn’t for everybody.

Tino Archuleta, a senior at Calvary Chapel, took fifth at state last year. The year before, Archuleta, the county’s top-ranked 103-pounder, was unable to wrestle in the section Division I finals because he failed to make weight at the Olympic League finals.

Archuleta was one of the Eagles’ top returning wrestlers, but he was unsure whether he wanted to compete anymore.

“Cutting weight was a problem with him,” Azevedo said. “But he’s matured a lot and he’ll be coming out, and I think he’ll do fine.”

Said Azevedo: “In the last few years coaching high school kids, I’ve come to the conclusion that cutting weight is not always the answer. I can look at kids and see that they shouldn’t cut weight. I’m finding that they compete better if they don’t have to cut very much weight. They feel better and there is less of a mental strain.”

San Clemente Coach Mark Calentino, who doesn’t require any of his wrestlers to cut weight, says the drawbacks of cutting weight can be too much.

“I remember when I wrestled, wrestlers who were cutting weight would not eat or drink water,” Calentino said. “And to top it off, they would give us salt tablets. Can you imagine . . . salt tablets?

“Cutting weight is the toughest thing about the sport. My position? If a kid doesn’t want to cut weight, that’s fine.

“I remember last year, the one kid who had the best chance for state was beaten at Masters [the state qualifier]. When I asked him what he was thinking about when he was out there, he said, ‘I just kept thinking if I win, I’ll have to make weight next week.’ ”