No Question About It, This Is a Breed Apart

For more than two hours each day, they lock themselves in a padded room with an aroma all its own: a blend of old rubber and sweaty socks. They wear funny looking uniforms called “singlets” and headgear that protects more ear than head.

Some are as calorie-conscious as candidates for the cover of Cosmopolitan . They practice moves such as “Grambie Rolls” and “Cradles,” and go through drills that can make some of the stuff in your aerobics class seem like a stroll along the beach. They come in all different shapes and sizes--from the 100-pounder who relies on cunning and quickness to the heavyweight who tries to throw that weight around.

There’s just no getting around it: wrestlers are a different breed of prep athlete. It’s not your average teen-ager who decides to lose 15 pounds to reach a desired weight (and maintain that weight throughout the season), compete in relative anonymity while basketball players collect headlines, and roll around on the mats for several months each year.

Most begin wrestling careers when they enter high school and complete them when they leave. There are very few age-group wrestling teams, and just as few opportunities for prep wrestlers to continue in the sport after graduation.

“It’s the most short-term sport around,” former Loara High School Coach John Dahlem said. “About 90% of the kids will never participate in the sport after high school. The life span of a wrestler is three to four years, unless he’s really good.

“What are they going to do after high school? Go down to the local park and enter a wrestling tournament?”

Exhausting workouts, apple-a-day diets, and little promise for the future. Not exactly the stuff of which recruiting brochures are made. Still, more than 2,000 athletes are drawn to wrestling rooms in Orange County high schools each day.

And when you ask some of them to explain why they do it, few can. Said Canyon senior Art Bone, one of Orange County’s best 107-pounders: “I really don’t know. It’s something I like to do, but it’s kind of hard to explain.”

Gary Bowden, Bone’s coach at Canyon, has a theory: “It reminds me of the guy rolling around in a bed of cactus,” he said. “Somebody comes up to him and asks him why he’s doing that. And he says, ‘Well, because it feels so good when I stop.’ ”

Of all the elements that set wrestlers apart from other prep athletes, none has a bigger impact on their lives than making weight. Bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better here, and wrestlers are constantly trying to gain an edge by dropping down in weight class in order to be matched against smaller opponents. The process is known as “cutting” and it has provided the sport with more than its share of horror stories.

“We don’t like to talk about that too much,” Dahlem admitted. “There’s a lot of concern in the area of weight reduction. It’s probably the most . . . unpalatable part of the sport right now.”

Coaches admit they have seen wrestlers try just about anything to reach a desired weight--from crash diets and sweat-box practice sessions to use of laxatives and diuretics (agents that promote the secretion of urine) and self-induced vomitting. Coaches say they don’t encourage such extreme methods of cutting weight, but acknowledge their existence.

“I’ve heard of guys doing just about anything,” said Dahlem, who retired as coach at Loara last year after 14 years. “College is even more unbelievable. I’ve heard stories there of guys being 20 pounds overweight the night before a match.”

Bowden estimates 60% of his time in coaching is spent with what he calls “weight counseling.”

Bowden: “We tell them (the wrestlers) to get their minds right. We try to impress upon their minds that they don’t want to miss weight.”

Bowden insists there is a right way and a wrong way to reduce weight. He is an advocate of proper dieting and tries to teach those methods to his wrestlers. “We have them cut out all the sweets and think about the calorie content of foods. We tell them to be aware of their weight and try to give them a basic science course so that they understand the essence of dieting.”

It’s easy to recognize the lightweight wrestler at lunch hour. He’s the one savoring each bite of an apple as if it were the last morsel of nutrition on the planet, while those around him devour cheeseburgers and fries. The wrestlers in the lower weight classes have a harder time losing weight, because they generally have less body fat.

Bone lost 15 pounds before the season to get to his wrestling weight of 105. “A lot of people would condemn that,” Bowden said. “I don’t, because he did it right. You just have to bring yourself to within striking distance of a weight. You take most of the fat off, then play around with two or three pounds of water weight.”

Bone said he followed a strict diet for approximately two months, then sweated off the last few pounds. “For lunch, I’d have an apple,” he said. “Then a light salad at night. You’re used to eating a lot of hamburgers and stuff like that, but you can’t. It’s tempting, but you just have to say no.”

Albert Lee, a teammate of Bone’s at Canyon and Orange County’s top-ranked 134-pounder, had to lose 16 pounds to get down to his wrestling weight. “It makes you more hungry,” he said. “You’ve sucked so much weight, it makes you think, ‘I’ve got to win, because I’ve done so much to get here. I’ve worked hard for this.’ ”

Bowden admits not all wrestlers use the right approach to cutting weight. “There’s diuretics . . . that’s the worst thing they can do,” he said. “I tell them where their strength goes if they try that. I’ve seen guys take water pills before a match and go out on the mats and absolutely fold up and die.

“Saunas are illegal, but that doesn’t mean they don’t use them. The (High School Wrestling) federation has a rule against plastic sweats (worn to increase perspiration), but most people ignore it.”

The CIF has a statewide “growth factor” rule, which allows for increases in each weight class as the season progresses. The 98-pound class, for example, is increased to 100 in December, 101 in February and 102 for the state championships in March. Similar increments are applied to all weight classes.

“But what happens is kids use that to cut down and drop another weight class at the end of the season,” Dahlem said. “Our rules aren’t the sanest, I don’t think.”

Dahlem never wrestled competitively, but through the years of coaching, he’s seen all the tricks.

“Here’s the classic,” he said. “I haven’t had anybody tell me the scientific factors involved here, but I’ve seen it work with my own eyes. I’ve seen a guy get on a scale before a match and be a few ounces overweight. Then, what he will do is get up against a wall and stand on his head for a couple of minutes. Weigh-ins are done in the nude, so it’s quite a sight.

“Anyway, they get back on the scale and and they make it. They’ve got the whole thing wired.”

Art Bone began wrestling as a freshman at Westminster High School. “I had nothing else to do, so I thought I’d try out for a sport,” he said. “I wasn’t big enough for football or tall enough for basketball, so wrestling seemed like the best thing for me.”

In an era in which prep athletes seem to be getting bigger and stronger each year, wrestling offers an avenue for the little guy to participate in sports.

“There’s not much a kid under 130 pounds can do (athletically),” Dahlem said. “But in wrestling, a kid isn’t inhibited by his size or muscle structure. You can also get a lot of kids who aren’t really what you’d consider good athletes, but they can make themselves become good wrestlers.”

But even the best wrestlers in the county don’t get the attention of the average basketball player, which is perhaps one of the reasons wrestlers don’t always hold basketball players in high esteem. A T-shirt spotted at the state championship meet in San Jose last March said it best: “It is better to have wrestled and lost . . . than to have played basketball.”

Bowden: “Wrestlers have an inferiority complex. Basketball players get most of the attention. Wrestlers go into the wrestling room and beat their heads against the wall for 2 1/2 hours and don’t get any of the glory. I think it’s because wrestling isn’t as easy to understand.

“Those basketball guys . . . I envy them sometimes. They just walk on to the floor and play. That’s so easy to me. We’ve got to roll out the mats and disinfect them. Plus, we have to find 13 guys in 13 different sizes. That’s not easy. Basketball just takes five guys. It’s nice if they’re tall, but you can just put five bodies out there and play.”

Dahlem tried to discourage feelings of animosity toward basketball players, but admitted that they are more readily recognized. “Basketball players are tall and noticeable,” he said. “And, on the other side, you’ve got your little 98-pounder with his letterman’s jacket that comes down to his knees.”

But for all the lack of attention, for all the sweat, weight-watching and drudgery, there are rewards.

“It’s a brutal sport, but it’s very rewarding,” Bowden said. “When they raise your hand up there and you look out at the crowd looking at you, you know that you did it. There’s nothing else like it.”