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Overview
Whether we are athletes or not, we all dream of extreme success and are all looking to make our future the best it can be, but along the way we will undoubtedly need time to recover and rejuvenate. Let these stories inspire you to find your path to strength and achievement along whatever path you take.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781609383268 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Iowa Press |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2016 |
| Edition description: | 1 |
| Pages: | 172 |
| Sales rank: | 101,297 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Born and raised in Connecticut, Scott Schulte has been a fan of Dan Gable his entire life. He enjoyed success as a high school wrestler and runner and as a high school wrestling and track coach for many years. The father of two sons and two grandchildren, he is a professional writer. He lives in Milford, Connecticut.
Read an Excerpt
A Wrestling Life
The Inspiring Stories of Dan Gable
By Dan Gable, Scott Schulte
University of Iowa Press
Copyright © 2015 University of Iowa PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60938-326-8
CHAPTER 1
Growing Up
My father always had a proud look in his eye when people would ask him, "When did you know your son was going to be a great wrestler?" The story he always told in response goes like this:
I was born on October 25, 1948, in Waterloo, Iowa, and our family's house at that time was small. Soon after being brought home from the hospital, my father, Mack, heard me crying in my crib one night. When he made his way from the bedroom to my crib, he found me on my back, fighting to get off of it. I was actually bridging up on my head to get off my back.
Even at just a couple of days old, I wanted nothing to do with being on my back.
* * *
As I became a toddler, my parents' drinking sometimes led to yelling and even violence. They were not alcoholics, but we had occasional visits from the local police. For whatever reason, I took to sucking my thumb and twisting my hair around my finger.
When my parents went out for the evening, I would sit by the front window, waiting for them to return, with my thumb in my mouth and my finger in my hair. I think I worried because when they were at home, I at least knew they were there, which was a little bit of a comfort. When they would go out though, I worried about them and when they would come home. So, like lots of kids, I sucked my thumb, but I twisted my hair too.
Though unlike most, this habit continued into first grade and even took on a new and somewhat odd twist. I would sit at my desk and suck my thumb with my left hand and play with the hair of the person in front of me with my right hand. My teacher tried to get me to stop and ended up having to chase me around the classroom.
My parents also tried different ideas to get me to stop and even got my pediatrician involved. He gave my parents this stuff to put on my thumb that tasted awful. I just sucked the bad-tasting stuff off and kept on sucking my thumb.
Then it stopped. There was no great or profound solution other than me deciding to stop sucking my thumb. I guess I just snapped out of it or no longer needed that habit. Either way, my parents and teacher were relieved.
* * *
The cornstalks swayed in the gentle Iowa summer breeze above me. I was about four years old and was hiding in a cornfield, giggling as my mother, Katie, and my big sister, Diane, called my name. They were searching the stalks for me, but whenever they got too close, I scurried deeper into the field. The corn was about six feet high, so it was hard to find me, and I knew it. I was determined not to be found. They were pretty mad at me, and rightfully so.
Earlier that day, I sat in the backseat of our family's convertible as my mom and sister drove down a long road flanked by cornfields. It was a perfect day for a drive with the top of the car down. I was bored just sitting there, so I grabbed Diane's purse and started playing with it. I held it up in the air. The wind from the drive caught it, and it went flying away.
My mother immediately hit the brakes and Diane started to chastise me. I knew I was in trouble, so I did the only thing I could think of and ran off to hide in the cornfield. My mom and Diane quickly found the purse in the ditch next to the road, but finding me was another question. The late-season cornstalks were a perfect place for a little boy to hide, and so the search began.
It took them over an hour to finally find me, and when they did, I was really in trouble. This being many decades ago, the punishment was fast and swift. Let's just say there were definitely consequences.
* * *
My cornfield adventure was not my first, nor my last. I was never one to hurt people or do anything illegal, but I was a little devil. I certainly kept my parents on their toes.
On one occasion, when I was about five years old, our family made a trip to Black's department store in downtown Waterloo. Back then, the elevators were run by an operator. As the four of us crowded into the store's elevator with several strangers, the operator asked, "Which floor, please?"
I was the smallest in the group and knew where we were going, and I quickly yelled out, "Fifth floor ... bastard!" Swearing was a common part of my parents' vocabulary, but my mother quickly shushed me, and my father scowled, embarrassed. No one else said anything as the elevator moved slowly from floor to floor. At each level, a bell sounded and upon reaching the fifth floor, the elevator stopped, and the door opened. Some people walked out, and I followed them. Then I looked back and saw that my family was still on the elevator as the doors were closing. They were angry with me for embarrassing them, and stayed on the elevator to teach me a lesson. Things were certainly different then than they are today.
I was so mad and upset. When I turned back around, there was an older lady bent over right in front of me. I just reacted and took a chomp on her rear. To this day I don't really remember why. She screamed, and that was the end for me. I knew I was in really big trouble.
A small crowd of store employees and shoppers came quickly to see what all the fuss was about. I had just bitten a complete stranger and was now in the hands of even more strangers. Fear began to wash over me, and I didn't know what to do. I was scared to death.
Finally, my parents and sister came back to the fifth floor to claim me, and when they found out that I had bitten a lady, they were even madder than they were before. This being the 1950s, when we got out to the car, my father popped me on the head with his ring finger. Later at home, my mom used a ruler to show her displeasure.
* * *
As I mentioned earlier, my parents occasionally became a little hostile toward one another after a few beers. Most of the time this was limited to shouting matches, but the police did make quite a few trips to our residence to settle things down and step in when needed.
One winter night though, my parents were having a little scuffle after a few drinks, and it escalated to the point where the police came to our home. Normally, the police left after calming things down. This night, however, the police took my father with them and put him in the squad car. Being in early elementary school and not understanding the situation, I was quite upset. But I had a plan. One of the police officers who took my father away was a neighbor of ours, and he had a son in my class at school. I was going to teach this particular police officer a lesson.
The police officer's son and I always walked home together after school. The next day, as we were walking home, I wrestled him to the ground, tied his wrists together, and escorted him to his front door. That night, the police officer made another stop at our house. This time, though, I was the topic of conversation.
I certainly got in trouble for that one. I later found out that my father's visit to the police station that night was just to get him out of the house for a few hours to settle down. There were no charges against him, and he wasn't actually arrested. They just played a friendly card game to get him back in the right frame of mind.
I learned a valuable lesson that day: make sure you have all your facts before reacting.
* * *
Like many young boys, I considered getting a haircut to be on the same scale as getting a tooth pulled, with the haircut maybe even leading the way in things I hated. My mother gave me my first haircuts to save money. Eventually though, there came a time when she wanted to take me to the barbershop for my haircut.
The day of my first barbershop haircut, I rode in the backseat of the convertible as my mother and older sister drove me to a Waterloo barbershop. It was cold out, so we had to keep the roof up as we drove. I did not want to get my hair cut, and I was going to make it as impossible as I could. I had been planning the whole car ride, so when my mother parked in front of the barbershop, I was ready.
When my mom and Diane got out of the car, I quickly pushed down the two lock buttons on the inside of the door. My mother had left the keys inside the car, and since it was cold outside, the windows were up. It was just click, click, and I was locked inside. No haircut!
I was feeling pretty good about myself, locked in the car for the moment. Outside, my mother, Diane, and the barber, along with several of his other customers, created quite a scene as they tried, without success, to get me to unlock the doors. This went on for some time until I realized I was getting cold. But before I gave in, I heard a click, and the door popped open.
My father had the spare key, and was I in trouble! Spankings were allowed, and I got one that day. I definitely deserved it.
After that though, I was immediately put back in the car and taken home. Victory! I may have gotten a spanking, but I didn't end up getting a haircut.
* * *
To teach a young hellion like me some lessons, my parents turned to the Young Men's Christian Association as a place to instill good values and help burn off some of my childhood energy. This was where I was first introduced to several different sports, including wrestling. My first days at the YMCA led to another incident of childhood antics, however.
I had just gotten done with wrestling practice, and it had gone really well for me. I was in a good mood and was waiting for my father to pick me up in front of the YMCA. Unfortunately I ran into a problem: the kid that I had just wrestled was hassling me. The match had been pretty one-sided, and now he wanted to fight me. I tried to do the right thing and said no to fighting, which was a positive step for me. This kid punched me then, and that was more than I could take, so we began to brawl.
My young nemesis took control at first, but I regained it and quickly began to dominate the fight, just as I had the wrestling match. Even at that age, I had good instincts, and I got a good hold of this kid. Our fight continued until our two fathers stepped in to end things.
We later became friends, and we both wondered how long our dads had watched before they stepped in. After all, back in those days, no one jumped in to break up fights right away.
CHAPTER 2Tunnel Vision
Fifty-plus years is a long time to have an emotion locked away. When unlocked, a buried experience can come back as if it had happened yesterday. One of my earliest experiences as an athlete and one of my first coaching lessons took place at the University of Iowa's old swimming pool, located in the former field house.
In 2011, the University of Iowa was refurbishing its sports complex, Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Due to its construction, the Hawkeye wrestling team was forced to temporarily move into the historic North Gym in the old field house. It was nice though, and the university did an excellent job making sure there were weights, bleachers, and plenty of mat space. It was a good set up.
The head coach, Tom Brands, and wrestling team members proudly showed me their new home-away-from-home and then brought me downstairs to the locker room. I had been in this place before, many years ago. The echo was the same, and the long tunnel from the locker room to the swimming pool was eerily identical to what it had been like five decades prior: dark, long, and somewhat lonely.
What was odd is that my office had been in this building for many years. When I returned from the 1972 Olympics, I served as the assistant wrestling coach at the University of Iowa for a few years before becoming head coach, and for several of those years, we trained in this very building. Yet during that time, I had never gone downstairs to the pool's locker room.
In that moment, standing there in 2011, a memory surfaced just as fresh as it had ever been. Like many athletes, my story began at a local YMCA. My parents saw the Waterloo YMCA as a good place for their lively son to work off some energy while being surrounded by friends and positive role models. It didn't take me long to latch on to a variety of different activities offered at the YMCA, but it wasn't wrestling I gravitated to at first as a youngster. Instead, I started swimming.
Swimming was fun, but competitive swimming was serious business. There were a lot of sports offered at the YMCA — boxing, wrestling, basketball — and I played them all, but we had a great swim team. We competed on a weekly basis against swimmers from other YMCA teams throughout Iowa.
This was where I had my first taste of winning ... and I liked it, a lot. I played baseball in the spring and summer and had been on a team that won a city championship, but swimming was really my own thing. I regularly won my events, and as the state championship meet approached, I alone stood undefeated in the backstroke and did well in the individual medley. The divisional meet, and then the state finals, gave me my initial experience of being a champion. When I finished first in the state in the backstroke, I knew I really liked winning. I had made a name for myself with my prowess in the pool. As an eleven-year-old, this was something I enjoyed.
Throughout the season, one of my teammates, Tom Penaluna, was always in my rearview mirror in the backstroke, both at practice and in competition. He was always right there, just behind me. At the state finals, it was the same in the backstroke, which wasn't even his best event.
After the state championship, we had a six-week break from competition, though we all continued to train. After those six weeks, we returned to the University of Iowa pool to compete in the regional championships. The meet included the best swimmers from Iowa and several surrounding states, but I was ready to keep my winning streak alive.
Something else happened, though: I took second place in the backstroke to Tom.
This was my first real taste of losing in my whole life. I had finished fourth in the state in the individual medley, but I had never experienced losing in the backstroke. The initial sting of defeat was made even worse by the fact that I had lost to Tom. He was a great kid who is very successful in business today. But I beat him every day in practice and at every competition. Yet, he had somehow beaten me. I took it very hard.
I had gotten used to watching my family and friends always jumping for joy in the stands after each victory in my string of wins. When I lost to Tom, I looked out from the pool and found my loved ones. They were still beaming with pride and clapping, but the emotion was different from when I won. Gone was the jumping for joy. It was replaced with smiles and offers of compassion and support.
I felt that I had let everyone down. The dagger of that pain was almost too much for me to bear as an eleven-year-old. Fifty years later, when I stood again in the locker room with Tom Brands and the 2011 wrestling team and looked down the tunnel to the pool, I felt that sting all over again. The feeling of losing and disappointing everyone washed over me again as though it was yesterday.
The drive home to Waterloo that night after the swim meet was a long one. As my family made the ninety-minute ride, I sat in the backseat of the car, staring out at the blackness. I remained inconsolable. I replayed the race over and over in my mind. I had to figure out what went wrong, how I had been beaten by someone I had never lost to in nearly twenty races.
When we got home, my mom sat me down and set me straight. She didn't pull any punches, and she let me know that I had made everyone proud, even in defeat. In my mind I had let everyone down. Yet they all still loved me, and my mom let me know that everything was going to be okay and that I had not disappointed them. I quickly straightened up.
Looking back now, I can see how this experience offered me my first glimpse into a world that not all athletes live in. Those who achieve the highest level of greatness in their lives often do so because they have people who love and support them. People who only try to accomplish something for themselves can miss out on how rewarding it is to have people around them who love them and care about them and support their goals. On that night many years ago, I didn't have any answers for why I lost. But I did know that my family loved and supported me.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Wrestling Life by Dan Gable, Scott Schulte. Copyright © 2015 University of Iowa Press. Excerpted by permission of University of Iowa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction Dan Gable xiii
Introduction Scott Schulte xv
1 Growing Up 1
2 Tunnel Vision 7
3 Molly Putz 12
4 Friendship Forever 18
5 Life Change 24
6 A Friend in Need 29
7 Two Clippings 35
8 The Anatomy of Defeat 41
9 Making a Comeback 49
10 Team USA at the 1972 Munich Olympics 53
11 The Case of the Missing Medal 58
12 Olympic Tragedy 61
13 A New Focus 66
14 The Banach Legacy 70
15 Wrestling Writer 76
16 Saving Barry Davis 79
17 Fishing with Jenni 86
18 A Total Life 89
19 Growing Up (Annie) Gable 94
20 Coaching the Brands 98
21 Granny's Powerful Letter 103
22 The Tattoos of Chad Zaputil 107
23 Molly's Victory 112
24 Ace in the Making 117
25 Finishing Strong 125
l26 Mother Knows Best 130
Epilogue: The Patience of Change 133
Dan Gable Achievements, Stats, & Life Record 141
Teammates & Teams Coached 145
Index 151
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