By Rob Sherrill, W.I.N. High School Editor
It’s not easy becoming a success in wrestling’s rugged upper-weight world, especially when you’re a freshman 189-pounder trying to make the best of the 215-pound weight class.
But for the last four years in Virginia’s Group AA, the 215-pound class has been owned by one and only one wrestler: Christiansburg High’s Cody Gardner.
Despite giving away 25 pounds, this 189-pounder did all right for himself, posting a 38-4 record and recording 21 pins while winning the title.
The rest has been history.
Gardner followed up that freshman season with marks of 51-2 as a sophomore, 48-0 as a junior and 46-0 this season. That gives him a career record of 183-6, including 132 pins and a 120-match winning streak over nearly three seasons to close his career.
Gardner has owned the 215-pound weight class in a few other places, too. He is part of an elite group of wrestlers that have won the prestigious Beast of the East Tournament three times, and has won the Walsh Ironman twice and the Junior National freestyle title a year ago.
Now Gardner owns something else: W.I.N. Magazine’s most prestigious age-group award, the Junior Dan Hodge Trophy for 2007. The award is presented jointly by W.I.N. and the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU).
Gardner, who also excels in the classroom with a 3.1 GPA, edged an elite field of contenders for this year’s award. Also in the running were:
• five-time Minnesota champion Zach Sanders (119) of Wabasha-Kellogg High;
• four-time Illinois champions Albert White (152) of Chicago St. Rita High and Mike Benefiel (171) of Lombard Montini High;
• three-time Ohio champion Colt Sponseller (160) of Millersburg West Holmes High, the Outstanding Wrestler in the NHSCA National High School Seniors Wrestling Championships;
• Idaho standouts Kirk Smith (171) of Boise Centennial High and Clayton Foster (189) of Kamiah High, who achieved the double distinction of Junior National freestyle and National High School Seniors crowns.
Who would have gotten Gardner’s vote? He cast his ballot for Benefiel, his teammate on the United States team in the Dapper Dan Wrestling Classic.
“I really enjoy watching him wrestle,” said Gardner, who shared the top step of the awards stand with Benefiel twice at the Ironman. “He’s a really good technician and a lot of fun to watch.”
In Christiansburg, wrestling is king, and Gardner knows that as the star of the best team in the school, wrestling is why he’s recognized everywhere in town. But he’d much rather be known as just another kid.
He likes to take his girlfriend to the movies. He enjoys waiting tables at Amelio’s, an Italian restaurant in town.
“I meet new people every day,” he said.
Gardner started wrestling when he was a third-grader in Burlington, N.J. His father, Keith, moved him to Christiansburg before he started high school. There he would blossom under coaches Kevin Dresser and Daryl Weber.
“I don’t think I could have learned from two better people,” Gardner said. “I don’t think it’s necessarily the moves or anything. It’s the intangibles. They can motivate people better than anybody I’ve seen.’
Dresser and Weber built the Christiansburg program, with Dresser, the Blue Demons’ head coach for Gardner’s first three seasons, succeeding current Iowa coach Tom Brands as head coach at nearby Virginia Tech. Thanks in part to Gardner’s commitment to the Hokies last November, Dresser’s first full year of recruiting at Blacksburg has been an unqualified success (see column on page 15). Weber has continued the success as Christiansburg’s head coach this year.
If any wrestler has pushed Gardner, it’s Blairstown (N.J.) Blair Academy ace Jared Platt, who has wrestled Gardner to three one-point final matches over the past year — in the Junior Nationals, the Ironman and the Beast of the East — though Gardner took all three encounters. That’s why he relished the challenge of the Dapper Dan, where big-time Pennsylvania opponent Kellen Harris of Sharon High, a two-time state champion, awaited.
“I love the challenge of wrestling somebody I haven’t wrestled before,” Gardner said. “I don’t really hesitate that much. I open up a little more. It’s easier to do what I can do than if I’m wrestling somebody I’ve had close matches with before.”
Gardner struck first with a takedown, added a three-point near fall for a 5-0 lead and was in command the rest of the way. The bonus point generated by his 13-5 major decision over Harris, a Marshall University football recruit, turned out to be the margin of victory.
“I just went out there and tried to score first,” Gardner said. “Usually in a match if I can score first, it opens things up a lot more, lets me wrestle a lot more how I want to wrestle.
“I got the first takedown pretty quick — I got an ankle pick on him. After that, I started trying to turn him and I got three back points and I had a 5-0 lead. I felt pretty good after that. I didn’t really know how the whole match would turn out, but I tried to do the best I could. Once I saw that I was close to the major I tried to work for it, to get the extra points.”
The major came in front of a partisan crowd in Pittsburgh that rooted for the home team to break the United States’ streak. Thanks in large part to Gardner’s performance, that didn’t happen, and he was voted the Outstanding Wrestler of the U.S. squad.
“It’s a charity match, and it was a lot of fun,” Gardner said. “(The crowd) wanted (Pennsylvania) to win, but they’re good sports.”
Like everybody else who lives in the hills of southwest Virginia, Gardner will remember exactly where he was when the tragic shootings took place at Virginia Tech, April 16. Thirty-three people, including the gunman, died in the attacks. Like many area schools, Christiansburg High was placed on lock-down when news of the shootings was released.
“I was in class,” Gardner said. “Then they announced the lock-down of the school. Nobody really knew what was happening. As soon as we found out, we were just praying that everybody was all right. Blacksburg and Christiansburg are such safe places, not much crime. It was a real shock.”
Gardner’s immediate thoughts were with the Hokie wrestling team and everybody else on the campus.
“I was thinking about everybody at the school,” he said.
Just like any ordinary kid.