The Twin Powers : Canyon’s Unbeaten Schultzes Have Few Peers on the Mat

One will pick you up, spin you around and body-slam you to the mat. The other will size you up, find your weaknesses and use just the right move to put you on your back faster than you can say “takedown.”

But no matter the methods, the end result is almost always the same. The wrestling Schultz twins--Brett and Bryon--of Canyon High School, will beat you.

Both are undefeated and ranked No. 1 by Orange County coaches in their weight classes, Brett in the 119-pound division and Bryon in the 126-pound division.

Brett, who is 19-0, won the Rosemead Invitational Tournament Saturday by pinning three opponents and beating a fourth, 9-0. He also won the prestigious 33-team El Dorado Invitational last weekend and the Mount Carmel Invitational in San Diego on Dec. 6.

Bryon (10-0) also won the Mount Carmel tournament. A strained ligament in his knee prevented him from wrestling in the last two invitationals, but he’ll return to action when the top-ranked Comanches resume their season in January.

The juniors, who have been wrestling since the third grade, are fraternal twins, but they hardly look like brothers. Brett is 5-feet 7 1/2-inches and has black hair; Bryon is 5-5 and has brownish-blond hair.

Their wrestling styles are even more contrasting.

Brett is Mr. Finesse. He relies on speed and quickness, and his moves are more subtle.

“He looks like a golfer,” Canyon Coach Gary Bowden said. “You’d never know, if you saw him on the sidewalk, that he’s as tough as he is.”

And then there is Bryon. He doesn’t merely wrestle an opponent. He does the monster mash. Bowden describes him as the kind of guy who will tear your arms off and then beat you to death with them. A real animal.

“He’ll squeeze you to a pulp, put you on your back and destroy you,” Bowden said. “You come out of a match with Bryon all purple, black and bleeding. He’s a 190-pound monster in a 130-pound body.”

Bryon doesn’t think he’s as blood-thirsty as Bowden makes him out to be. His style, he said, is more the result of a weight program that has helped him increase his maximum bench press to 210 pounds, almost twice his body weight.

“The quick moves I had before are coming off as more powerful because of my strength,” Bryon said. “I never had strength until this year. I just started lifting after last season.”

Brett doesn’t bother much with weights. He’s more of a track athlete who wrestles for insurance--in case he doesn’t get a running scholarship to college, he hopes he’ll still be good enough to earn a wrestling scholarship.

“I have no strength,” Brett said. “I come right out of cross-country, where we do some interval lifting for endurance, but bulk (muscle) slows you down (in cross-country). I can only bench press about 140.”

So, Brett has gotten by with speed and skill, and Bryon has won with strength and skill. It’s difficult to say which is more effective, because both have been so successful.

The transfer students from Decatur, Ill., who moved to Anaheim Hills last June after their father took a job with a Long Beach construction company, have handled all the competition California has had to offer so far.

But there is one wrestler they’ll never beat.

Each other.

The twins have made a pact. If they ever get stuck in the same weight class at a tournament, one will wrestle in another weight class.

The decision came after this year’s Orange County Summer League tournament, in which Brett and Bryon reached the finals in the 130-pound division. But when it came time for the championship match, both took forfeits instead of going against each other.

“We’ve wrestled each other all our lives, and we know each other’s moves,” Brett said. “We don’t want to start fighting and arguing again. It’s kind of hard when we wrestle each other.”

Most of their matches have taken place on the practice mat or on the living-room carpet. The twins could recall only four times--during junior high school--when they had wrestled competitively. Brett won all four.

“He’s always been bigger than me,” Bryon said. “Until this year.”

Many of their battles had little to do with their love for the sport. The twins have had their share of disputes, both verbal and physical. Remember, they are brothers.

The move from Illinois to California has helped their relationship.

Last year, Brett and Bryon had different groups of friends. Bryon wasn’t crazy about some of Brett’s friends, and Brett didn’t exactly embrace a few of Bryon’s.

The twins played different sports outside of wrestling (Brett ran cross-country and track, Bryon played football), and they saw little of each other at school or at home.

That has changed.

“We’ve had to make completely new friends, so we’ve kind of made the same ones, many through wrestling,” Brett said. “It’s nice having a brother there, especially coming into a new school. You have someone to talk to and to do stuff with when no one else is around. We’re getting along well.”

Brett’s relationship with high school athletics hasn’t always been so smooth. The two have gotten along like . . . well, like typical brothers. There have been good times and rough times.

Brett, an excellent distance runner, had apparently won this past fall’s Century League cross-country meet. But after the race, league coaches voted, 5-1, to disqualify him for jostling with Santa Ana’s Roger Nava during the last 50 yards of the race.

Canyon Coach Don Pycior filed a protest, but league principals voted to uphold the disqualification, which cost Schultz and the Comanches a trip to the Southern Section preliminaries.

Schultz believes his actions were in line and that, if anything, both runners should have been disqualified because of the contact. But both he and his parents (Bob and Pat) decided not to pursue the issue.

They had been down that road before, and they knew they’d be heading in the wrong direction.

In Brett’s freshman year at Eisenhower High in Decatur, he was involved in a wrestling dispute that led to a school district hearing and the censure of the wrestling program.

Schultz had finished the regular season with a 29-1 record, with 24 of the victories coming in the 112-pound division and the rest at 105. But for the state tournament, his coach told him that he had to wrestle at 105 pounds, despite Brett’s claims that it was physically impossible to reduce his weight to compete in that division.

Brett asked for a wrestle-off against 112-pound division wrestler Jeff Scott, whom he had beaten three times that season. The coach refused, and Brett, who was ranked fourth in the state at 112 pounds, was not allowed to compete in the state tournament.

Jeff Scott was the son of the Eisenhower dean of boys. The Schultzes met with the coach, athletic director and school principal over the issue but made no progress. Another meeting, with the assistant district superintendent, resulted in no action.

The Schultzes then hired an attorney and filed a grievance with the Illinois High School Assn., claiming that the high school and the district were negligent in refusing to allow Brett to compete. They claimed that the dean of boys had pressured the coach into letting his son wrestle at 112 pounds.

The family spent about $2,000 in its fight, which dragged on for about five months. The Decatur Herald and Review devoted a full page--seven stories--to the controversy.

The coach was eventually placed on probation, and Brett and Bryon transferred to another school.

When the cross-country incident occurred this fall, the family didn’t want to go through a similar ordeal, so it just dropped the case.

That was OK with Brett, who seems to have put the incident behind him.

“I’m just looking forward to getting some revenge in track,” he said.