For New Trier wrestler Jon Fiegen, the bottom came in the sectional tournament last year when he lost to Hersey`s Paul Waterman. It wasn`t so much that he was beaten and didn`t qualify for the state tournament as much as it was how he lost.
”I don`t know if I could have beaten him, but he beat me well enough to realize that I had to do some work,” said Fiegen. ”Looking back, I don`t know if I could have beaten him, but he was a lot stronger than me. I didn`t immediately decide to commit to wrestling. Eventually, I decided if I was going to be in it, spend all that time, I might as well make it as good as I can.”
Fiegen didn`t qualify for the state tournament and Waterman did. After talking with Trevian wrestling coach Mike Duroe and baseball coach Ron Klein, the 185-pound senior decided not to go out for baseball and give wrestling more attention in the spring. It`s paid off with a 25-0 record and three invitational championships this season.
”After the sectionals, he told me he should have gone Downstate and I agreed with him,” said Duroe. ”He hadn`t paid the price. He did last spring and summer. Now he`s becoming more intense each week. I see him doing the little things that we have talked about.”
As a sophomore, Fiegen earned a starting spot at first base on the New Trier baseball team. It wasn`t easy giving up the sport. There were times when he had second thoughts about it, especially during tough workouts with Northwestern 190-pounder Mark Whitehead. He wrestled with NU`s Wildcat Wrestling Club a couple of nights a week and lifted weights when he wasn`t wrestling. It was hardly as much fun as pounding a fastball.
”I realized it was a whole different thing,” said Fiegen, who also played football at New Trier last fall. ”I tried to keep it in my head that he (Waterman) had twice as much wrestling experience as me. It gets frustrating. You don`t like to lose. Even going into it, knowing I was going to get beat, it was frustrating. That will probably help me, just the toughness, when I get Downstate.”
After learning some new techniques from Duroe and Whitehead, Fiegen entered his first freestyle tournament and lost. ”I really didn`t know what I was doing,” he said. He progressively got better, winning a couple of matches in a big tournament in Rockford and eventually winning a spot on the Prairie State Games scholastic freestyle team.
Before he went to the Prairie State Games, Fiegen spent a week at the summer wrestling camp of Iowa coach Dan Gable in Iowa City. The Gable camp was another lesson in what it takes to become successful at a higher level. The term campers doesn`t describe those attending the camp. There are no picnics or canoe races. Just wrestling, working out, wrestling and more wrestling.
”I like to think I learned how to train there,” Fiegen said. ”It`s amazing what your body can do. You can push yourself so far. I learned how far you can push yourself coming back the second day after that tough first day. We`d work out two or three times a day and have a chalk talk at night. It was intense. They wanted it all. After I`d eat a huge amount of food and lay in bed dreading the next workout.
”One night, Gable and another coach gave a clinic on pressure. It`s sort of a frame of mind that you`re going to do what you want to do to win. I`m trying to work on that. I had a guy that I was having trouble with, so I just tried to pressure him the first two periods as hard as I could and by the third period he was tired. It`s the kind of attitude that you`re not going to lose.”
He hasn`t lost since, starting with the Prairie State Games scholastic freestyle title.
