Looking Like a Million : Agoura’s Burns Wrestles with Series of Injuries Comes up undefeated

Sean Burns’ battered body--the right side of it, anyway--probably had no business that year getting back onto a wrestling mat.

During a physically and emotionally painful four-month period in 1991, Burns, now an Agoura High senior:

* Broke his right ankle and dislocated his right foot.

* Tore a ligament in his right knee.

* Dislocated his right shoulder.

* Cried.

And all before he had completed his first match.

Yet somehow, despite the full-body ache, Burns dragged himself to the mat. From there, he did a pretty good job of dragging opponents across it.

Although his first appearance that junior year didn’t come until Agoura’s final dual meet of the regular season, Burns had 16 matches and won all but three in claiming a second consecutive Marmonte League championship.

“I didn’t have much of a season as far as time,” Burns said. “So, I figured, whatever happens, that’s about the best I can do.”

This season the ankle, the knee and the shoulder are fine. And Burns not only feels like a million bucks, he’s wrestling like it.

Burns, ranked third at 171 pounds in the Southern Section preseason poll, is 23-0, including 12 pins, and has placed first at the Newbury Park, Schurr and Quartz Hill tournaments.

He will try for his fourth tournament title today when Agoura competes in the 16-team Alemany Invitational.

Burns has a career record of 67-13, including a 28-10 mark and a league championship as a sophomore. Finally healthy, he is a clear favorite to win his third league title.

“He’s a very good technical wrestler, really solid in all aspects,” Agoura Coach Steve Smith said. “He has had very few points scored against him this season.”

Nine to be precise--and he has been scored on in only three matches.

In Thursday’s four-way league meet with Channel Islands, Royal and Thousand Oaks, Burns recorded a pin in 57 seconds, as well as victories of 5-0 and 12-0. In each of Burns’ 12 victories by pin, he has held his opponent scoreless.

And Burns, who once grappled with the notion that he might never wrestle again, savors each moment.

“I didn’t think I was coming back,” he said. “I was scared. But I pretty much took the idea that I’m just going to go as far as I can go.”

Burns’ comeback story could very well have been told during football season.

The ankle injury caused Burns, a 6-foot-1 defensive back, to miss the entire season as a junior. But he returned last fall and played an integral role in Agoura’s surprising fourth-place league finish. The Chargers (6-5) entered the Division III playoffs as an at-large entry and were eliminated in the first round.

Burns, who intercepted two passes and also filled in at running back, was a first-team all-league selection on defense. Burns has a lengthy scar on his leg and another on his knee. A slight cut is beginning to heal on the bridge of his nose. He speaks casually with plenty of detail about his injuries, perhaps because he has grown accustomed to living with them.

“He was all wrapped up in Ace bandages and tape and we tried to keep him put together,” Jerry Burns said of his son. “Every match, he was in pain. It was just a question of how much. But he’s always been kind of mature for his age and he keeps control of himself emotionally.”

That is something difficult to do just listening to Burns describe his 1991 injuries. Burns, playing goalie in a summer-league soccer match against Cerritos, raced out of the box to head off an attacker. The players collided.

“My ankle just kind of twisted around and it popped,” Burns said. “Tore a tendon. Fractured a fibula. I heard the doctor say something about ‘five to six months in a cast’ and I just started bawling.”

He wore a series of three casts for a total of nearly three months.

Soon after, Burns began stretching and crawling around the empty wrestling room with no one around to help him if he should . . .

“I heard my knee pop,” he said. “Then it popped again and I was screaming. I limped over to the phone and called my dad.”

Doctors drained fluid from the knee and performed arthroscopic surgery. In December, Burns finally returned to the mat against Westlake’s Andy Crisp. Early in the second period, pop went the shoulder.

The injury was diagnosed as a minor dislocation. Burns was able to continue the bout and emerged with a 9-3 victory.

But by that time, Burns was ready to pop a vessel.

“There were times when I thought, ‘Why do I even bother?’ ” he said. “But after I realized that I was still in decent shape, I wound up taking a different attitude.”

Enough pain medication to fill a small medicine cabinet was prescribed for Burns. But little was consumed. “He doesn’t believe in taking it unless he really has to,” Jerry Burns said. “If I had thought he was in too much pain, I wouldn’t have let him wrestle. I think he kept it quiet because he wasn’t going to be denied.”

Added Smith: “He said he felt he had something to prove. I said, ‘OK we’ll let you wrestle. But if I see any limping or gimping, I’m yankin’ ya.’ ”

Burns recorded 10 pins last season. He met Crisp again for the league title and pinned him in the first period. “I figured, ‘I better get outta here quick before something else happens to me,’ ” he said.

Burns was 4-1 in the section’s 4-A finals, losing in the third round to a wrestler from Anaheim Canyon. Burns finished third in the tournament. He was eliminated in the Masters tournament by a wrestler who finished fifth in the section finals. “That was a slap in the face,” Burns said.

He is quick to add that that won’t happen this season. Burns states that, if healthy, he would have won the section title last season.

The title went to Eric Escobedo of Huntington Beach, a junior this season who Burns is confident he can defeat. “Last year has something to do with how hard I’m working this year,” Burns said. “I pretty much figured I had to work two years of varsity wrestling into this last one.”