By Kelly Finn, WIN

When it comes to the sport of wrestling, brothers are just about as common on the mat as cauliflower ears and back flips. Most start out just wrestling with each other at home then progress to the wrestling room where they always have a sparring partner. 

            Many brothers have made their mark in wrestling; such as Tom and Terry Brands, Ben and John Peterson, Trent and Travis Paulson and so on.

            There is one more pair of brothers who can now be added to the list of memorable family teams; the Mango brothers.

            Spenser and Ryan Mango, natives of St. Louis, took Council Bluffs and the World Teams Trials by storm. Spenser, the 2008 Olympian, won the top title at 121 pounds and younger brother Ryan finished fourth at the same weight.

            After a scary semifinal victory where Spenser almost got pinned by Sam Hazewinkel, the older Mango came back in the Championship Series to defeat three-time World Team member, Lindsey Durlacher.

            “Coach Jim (Gruenwald) was telling us last week, wrestle to win, don’t wrestle not to lose,” said Spenser. “I made the Olympic Team last year but I wanted to build on that. (I wanted) to get this World Team spot first and then go to the Worlds and get a gold.”

            Spenser, 22, expects to make a lot of changes in preparation for the World Championships in Denmark in September. With last year being his first year on the U.S. world-level team — an eighth-place finish in Beijing — it was an eye-opening experience for the junior at Northern Michigan University, where he is part of the United States Olympic Education Center under coach Ivan Ivanov.

            “I guess last year was my first time and I was a little nervous and kind of timid,” said Spenser. “But this year I’m going to go out there and not leave anything out there.”

            Spenser, who competed at 132 pounds at the U.S. Nationals before dropping down for the Trials, believes his brother will eventually move up a weight.

            Ryan, a recent high school graduate and future Stanford Cardinal, has been making a name for himself in the world of wrestling. A double Cadet Nationals champion in 2006, Ryan is nipping at the heels of his Olympic brother.

             “I think (Ryan) adds some depth to the weight class,” Spenser said. “A couple of years and he’s going to be a force.”

            The Mango brothers only occasionally get to train with one another as Ryan can only reunite with Spenser one week out of the year before the demands of tournaments and competitions begin to take control.

            But inevitably, wrestling in the same class, there always lies the chance that the two close brothers may have to wrestle one another for a title. It just about happened at the World Team Trials, where both Mangos were on the same side of the nine-man Challenge Tournament bracket.

            While Spenser beat Max Nowry in a quarterfinal, Ryan lost to Hazewinkel, the first of two setbacks against the former Oklahoma wrestler (Hazewinkel also beat him in the third-place bout).

            “We would have wrestled if we both would have won our second-round matches,” Spenser said, May 30. “Last night… he was like, ‘I’m not going to forfeit,’ and I told him I wasn’t going to forfeit either.’

            “My mom doesn’t want us to wrestle at all.”

            Either way, Deborah Mango is proud.