By Mike Finn, W.I.N. Editor
Many high school wrestlers, who had already won multiple state championships and garnered a Div. I scholarship before the start of their final season, might have also suffered from senioritis.
Jon Reader was not one of those wrestlers.
Yes, the senior from Davison (Mich.) High School had already won two state championships and inked a scholarship with Iowa State before the start of the 2005-06 season. But the middleweight wasn’t about to suffer from the disease of boredom and overconfidence.
Instead Reader saved his best for last as he won a third straight Michigan state championship and recorded his first perfect season (60-0). And by virtue of pinning 56 of his victims — including 54 in a row — Reader earned the Junior Schalles Award presented annually to the nation’s best pinner.
“I’ve trained as hard as I can every day,” said Reader. “I go beyond my limit every single day. That’s what our coaches have taught us to do. It doesn’t matter who I’m wrestling. I go out there every time like it’s the state championship.”
Davison coach, Roy Hall, has seen plenty of great wrestlers come out of his program, including six-time Junior Nationals champion Brent Metcalf. But Hall admitted he was amazed by Reader; not so much by his pinning performance — the 54 straight pins tied the state of Michigan record set by Junior Schalles winner Nick Simmons in 1999 when the current Michigan State Spartan wrestled for Williamston High School — but his 160 pounder’s reaction to his streak.
“He never talked about it,” said Hall, who saw Reader compile a 234-6 record in his four-year career. “He had always been a great pinner. I just believe that was his focus. He is very intense and wears guys down. He breaks their spirit, which allow him to pin them. It was all about dominating people. He is a hammer on top and is always looking for a pin. He is a well-conditioned kid.”
Reader was also unselfish. Originally a 112-pounder as a freshman, when he finished third in the state, he later won state titles at 135 as a sophomore and a second state title at 152 pounds as a junior. But in his senior season, he moved up to 160 pounds to help his team, which has been the dominant Division 1 Michigan high school program, winning six of seven team championships since 2000; the only exemption was in 2001, when Hall’s boys finished second.
“I could have made 152 but as the year went on, I settled in at 160,” said Reader, who plans on wrestling at 165 pounds in college. “It allowed me to lift and get bigger, which will be good for college.”
Oddly, the streak ended, March 4, when he scored a 19-1 technical fall over Kyle Summerfield of Hartland High School in the state’s dual championship, also won by Davison. And that victory by Reader, which propelled Davison to a 30-29 victory over Hartland, came at 152 pounds.
“At the end of the year, coach Hall needed the entire team to go down, because that was the only way we could win the team title, we all sacrificed and went back down,” said Reader, who said he was not disappointed when the streak ended.
“I didn’t even keep count,” he said. “Every time I went out there, I just seemed to pin the guy. It just seemed to kind of happen. When the record stopped, it wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t like I was trying to do it.”
But Reader could see a difference in his opponents prior to pinning them.
“As matches would go on, I would get the guys tired and it was almost like they’d just roll over,” he said. “When I went down to Ohio, and met that Medina kid (Greg Heinz, Paine Riverside) in the finals, I broke the kid and he just rolled over (fall, 1:16). A guy who is broke is a guy who can’t go past the four-minute mark. Once that four-minute mark hits, they are like, ‘Oh gosh. Here comes the third period.’ ”
Reader is actually the second Davison wrestler to win this award named after Wade Schalles, who set a collegiate record with 106 falls for Clarion in the 1970s. The late Chase Metcalf, Brent’s older brother, also won the award in 2002 and served as an inspiration and coach for Reader at Davison until the older Metcalf died tragically in an auto accident last September.
“I’m really honored to have this award because Chase also won it,” said Reader, who also was one of five regional winners of the Dave Schultz High School Excellence Award by the National Hall of Fame.
“He was like a mentor to me. I loved the guy. He practiced with us every day. When you wrestle for Davison, you wrestle for the team. He was a big team player.”
Even though Reader’s high school career is over as a folkstyle wrestler, following his second-place finish at the NHSCA Senior Nationals in Pittsburgh in March, Reader still has unfinished business in Fargo, N.D., this summer.
“I can’t tell you how bad I want that title,” said Reader, who lost in the 2004 finals to Brandon Stitch and finished third in 2005 after losing to current Iowa wrestler Ryan Morningstar. “Every day, I eat and sleep that.”
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