NCAAs OTHER WINNERS
Trenge retired without title, but with plenty memories
When a team dominates an NCAA championship the way Oklahoma State overwhelmed the field in the recent tournament in St. Louis, it was easy to spot the winners adorned in orange, who won 38 of 47 matches in nine different weights and an impressive five individual championships.
But the reality is that there are more losers in any such tournament as only 40 of the 330 wrestlers in the NCAAs won their final matches. And of the 619 matches wrestled in the Savvis Center, only the final ten winners — and some All-Americans like American University’s first-ever medal-winner Dan Waters at 174 pounds — really look back at their NCAA experience and are satisfied.
That means that over 90 percent of the wrestlers could be seen finding ways of dealing with losing. Some were tears; some were shouts of anger and frustration. Very few can understand what is truly happening within the 42-foot diameter of the wrestling mat’s circle other than that wrestler.
That was also the case of Lehigh’s Jon Trenge, who has been left historically empty by the NCAAs; from being the final of 159 victims in Cael Sanderson’s career-ending victory in the 2002 final; to losing in the closing seconds of the 2003 final to Minnesota’s Damion Hahn; and most
recently losing to Northern Iowa’s Sean Stender in the 2005 semis.There was no outburst from Trenge, who also returned early the next morning to wrestle his final two matches in the consolations, including a 12-1 victory over Oklahoma’s Joel Flaggert in the third-place match. And following that bout, Trenge simply took off his shoes and left them at the center of the mat to mark his retirement from the sport.
“I saw Rulon do it,” said Trenge referring to two-time Olympic medalist Rulon Gardner’s farewell to wrestling in Athens, Greece, last fall. “I just thought it was a regular thing that you do when you retire.”
Trenge called that moment the highlight of his Lehigh career, because it would also be the last time the native of nearby Orefield, Pa., wore the $120 pair of goggles specially attached to his headgear and built to protect his eyes repaired from early detached retinas.
“When I get back to my room, I’m throwing the rest of them away,” grinned Trenge, whose first goggled-headgear was created by his father, Mike. “He took a dog leash and used the strap to go through the head gear and sewed it around part of the goggles.”
Those memories also created a bond between him and his father, who as a divorced single parent raised Jon and his brother in the simplest terms.
“I didn’t have a mother figure so I wasn’t pampered growing up,” Jon said. “I never had someone hugging me all the time. It was, ‘Go to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow.’; or ‘I’m working late tomorrow. Cook dinner on your own.’ My dad was great but it was tough some times. I’m not used to getting things easy.”
That was also the case this season for Trenge, who received the scorn of spectators after the two-time national runner-up at 197 pounds was disqualified for unsportsmanlike conduct in a pair of matches earlier this season. What made it tougher for Trenge was that he was unable to talk about it to anyone other than a sports psychologist and anger management specialist.
“I think I learned more from that than from the actual wrestling part,” said Trenge. “That’s what wrestling is all about. We don’t make money doing it, so you try to take things out that help you build character, make you better off in life.”
Greg Strobel, who has spent ten years coaching at Lehigh, ranks Trenge among his favorites.
“I could count on one hand the ones who are special to me and he’s on that hand,” said Strobel, as a tear appeared in his eyes.
What Strobel could see is that there was more to NCAA Championships than just winning and losing.
(Mike Finn, who has covered wrestling for the past 20 years, can be reached at mikef@win-magazine.com.)
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