Furm's Take: Love Thy Wrestler
By Cory Furman
Assistant Athletics Director, Messiah College
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Posted Feb. 18, 2010
Man against man or man for man? When it comes to Messiah wrestling, it appears to be the latter.

Grantham, PA — I’m dumber than socks on squirrels.

After working in college athletics for 10 years, you’d think I’d know a team sport when I saw one. Soccer? Of course. Basketball? Please. Lacrosse? Hit ‘em if you got ‘em! Wrestling?

Eh.

Really? Wrestling? No. Not even close. I mean, it’s grappling. Man against man. Destroy your opponent with your bare hands! How can there be any team qualities to that?

I was steadfast in that thinking until I ran into Bryan Brunk, Messiah head wrestling coach, a few weeks ago. He was leaving the Falcons’ practice room, and looked as if someone had poured Tabasco sauce in his headgear.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him.

“Challenge bouts,” he said, not helping my understanding at all.

Junior 157-pounder Mike Bressler then walked past, looking equally forlorn.

“He lost?” I presumed.

“Nope. He won.” Brunk said.

Now more confused than Toyota, I decided I needed to sit in on some Messiah wrestling practices.

Here’s the Messiah Wrestling For Dummies skinny: In each weight class, athletes are allowed at least one of these aforementioned ‘challenge bouts’ every season. Brunk and his staff come up with depth charts throughout the year and, if a wrestler hasn’t proven himself as the clear starter in his weight, the guy immediately below him can challenge him for that spot.

That is, until the first week of February. That’s last call for challenge bouts.

“And that’s when it gets hard to handle as a coach,” Brunk said.

Bressler and classmate Matt Cross had been going back and forth all season at 157, and their results in previous tournaments, practices and invitationals had yet to yield a clear first-string guy.

So, they wrestled for it on Tuesday, Feb. 2. Winner take all.

And by all, I mean all. The winner would wrestle in all the matches left in the season, including the conference championships and possibly the NCAA National Championships, if he got that far.

The loser?

I figured he’d be able to call it a season. Go hang out with your girlfriend. After all, what’s the point in practicing something that you are guaranteed not to participate in competitively? I saw how physically demanding Messiah’s wrestling practices are. It ain’t recess.

But that’s not the way it works.

“Whoever backs up the starter, it’s his job to make that guy the best he can possibly be,” Brunk told me. “For the rest of the season, it’s his job to make (the starter) an All-American. Why? Because we’re a team. And in this sport, that’s how you become a team.”

It’s also how you get to watch guts being wrenched. Cross had Bressler all but beaten in his Feb. 2 challenge bout. Had a 4-0 lead with 30 seconds left in the final period. It was around that point that Bressler somehow got a reversal, got Cross on his back and picked up three near fall points as a result.

Bressler won 5-4.

“Matt made an awful noise when Mike reversed him,” Brunk said. “It was the kind of noise you make when you know you just lost your season. Cross had earned it. He had almost won it, and he knew he blew it.”

After it was over, Cross shook Bressler’s hand, and left the room to compose himself. Brunk – the poor sap who has to officiate these things – just sat there, drained. Meanwhile, Bressler – instead of celebrating the fact that he would be Messiah’s post-season representative at 157 pounds – did the same.

“Mike and I just sat there, staring at the mat,” Brunk remembers. “I didn’t want Matt to win. I didn’t want Mike to win. I was just upset that someone lost.”

But 15 minutes later, something strange happened. Cross came back into the room and addressed his teammates. He told them that, regardless of whether or not they were a starter or third-string guy, this team needed everyone.

“A lot of times (senior and 165-pound stud) Trent Zempel would say things to the guys about the backups really pushing the starters,” Cross told me. “I always thought it might mean more coming from a backup.”

Perhaps. But from a backup for all of 15 minutes? Even Brunk was stunned.

“I’m not sure you’ll find another team where a guy who just lost it all is going to come back and work his butt off just so the guy ahead of him is as well-prepared as possible,” Brunk said. “That’s pure selflessness.”

Rest assured, it’s not like this everywhere. Senior Domineak Commodore transferred in from another school following the first semester of his freshman year. There, they had public challenge bouts, where fans and wrestlers alike unabashedly chose sides.

Think West Side Story in singlets.

“Man, it was something,” Dom remembered. “Before you even knew the guys, people were gunning for you. It was divided from day one. After the wrestle-offs, people quit. It wasn’t a team. It was every man for himself.”

That’s not quite the case in the Falcons’ camp. Junior Michael Hojnacki suffered a similar fate in this year’s final challenge match at the 184-pound card, falling to freshman Travis Ebersole by a single point after leading with 10 seconds to go.

You wouldn’t know that from watching Hojnacki compete in practice, however. As an upperclassmen and leader, ‘Hoj’ carries himself like he’s a two-time All-American.

“There’s an underlying theme here that makes this all possible,” Hojnacki said. “We learn to be brothers and teammates before we’re competitors. Yeah, there’s a time to be serious going against these guys, but our brotherhood is bigger than that. If I were to pack it in just because I didn’t get my way … it would be completely letting go of everything we try to be. To just give up on it, that would be pretty selfish.”

Messiah wrestling: Where human nature is thrown out the window.

“To me, this is what we’re supposed to be doing,” Brunk says. “When guys buy into this, it forges friendships that can’t be broken. What other sport at Messiah are you encouraged to beat the tar out of someone, then go to dinner with him, live with him? These guys are loving each other like Christians are supposed to, and they’re doing it by bashing each others’ heads. It’s what makes wrestling unique at a place like Messiah.”

I guess. At least I didn’t have to fret too much over Cross’ tough loss to Bressler two weeks back. Cross went The Biggest Loser on rewind and beefed up, and will now represent Messiah at 174 in this weekend’s conference championships, filling in for injured starter Dave Jones.

Of course, he had to beat someone to earn that right:

None other than a trimmed-down Mike Hojnacki.

Hojnacki won’t physically be in Messiah’s lineup this post-season, but should anyone near the top of the Falcons’ order earn an all-conference honor, the medal might as well have Hojnacki’s name on it.

“We say that all the time,” Brunk said. “Any award we get really belongs to all of the guys. So many guys sacrifice their personal glory to help someone else be great. It’s easier to see the roles of teammates in other sports, it’s just harder to see it in a sport like ours. But it’s there.”

As much as he would love to be on the mat next weekend, Hojnacki knows that to be truth. And, thanks to Brunk and his boys, now I do as well.

“It’s a privilege to be a part of this team,” Hojnacki told me after practice last week. “To think about pushing a guy to be his absolute best and getting him on the podium at conference or at nationals … I really, really want to see that.”

It’s pretty clear he won’t be alone.


Cory Furman is the assistant athletics director for public relations and marketing at Messiah College. His monthly column, “Furm’s Take” does not necessarily represent the views of Messiah College or the Messiah College department of athletics. Have a comment? Click here to send him an email.