Football

My obsession with sports began at an early age. When I was ten years old, my parents moved our family from Fort Wayne, Indiana down to Suwanee, Georgia, a suburban city outside of Atlanta. To me it seemed like everything down south revolved around football. Every friend I made at my new elementary school was either sharing stories about the past season or was planning on playing the next.

A few weeks after 6th grade started, I brought home a flyer about the youth football program from school and convinced my mother to bring me to the tryouts. She called the youth team's head coach, Tom Schie, and told him about my disability. Tom cut her off before she had time to explain the full extent of it, saying "just bring him out and we'll see what he can do!" I made the team and played ball for three seasons; wearing the number 8 on my jersey and lining up as a defensive lineman or noseguard, to be specific. I fell in love with the sport, but more than anything, it gave him me confidence I needed to tackle wrestling.

Wrestling

My dad tricked me into coming out to my first wrestling practice. Letting my imagination run wild with dreams of being a professional wrestling superstar - I actually believed I was going out to practice jumping off the top rope of a ring in front of thousands of roaring fans. The truth was much more discouraging. Since my dad had wrestled through high school and some in college, he fully understood the level of sacrifice it takes for able-bodied athletes to succeed in the sport. Could I actually compete? And if I could, would I ever win?

That question took nearly two years to answer while I lost every match I wrestled for a season and a half. With my father's direction, I decided not to dwell on getting that first win and instead made it my goal to never be pinned. And after a decade of wrestling, I have never been pinned. My coach, Cliff Ramos, tried everything he could think of to give me a competitive chance at winning a match. He stayed after the high school practices to work with me one-on-one, tucking his arms in his sleeves and wrestling on his knees to understand my point of view. All told, I lost thirty-five matches in a row.

Finally, halfway through my second season, I won my first match and never looked back. In fact, my 2nd season was the last losing season I ever had. By 8th grade, I won the youth regionals and was undefeated going into the state tournament. In 9th grade, I was the starting junior varsity wrestler at 95lbs. for the Collins Hill Eagles. By 10th grade, I won the King of the Hill Tournament; widely recognized as the Georgia's junior varsity state tournament. In 11th grade, I split time as the varsity 103 pounder and had 9 varsity wins with 2 pins and only 1 loss.

During my senior season, I won a total of 36 varsity matches. Eight of my wins were by pin and several other wins were over state champions and state placers. Even though I wrestled with a broken nose through the end of my senior year, I still managed to place in the top 12 at the Senior Nationals; only one match away from becoming a high school All-American. I decided to attend the University of Georgia and wrestled as UGA's 125lbs. starter on their club team as a freshman in 2005. Over the past couple years, I developed a huge passion for submission wrestling (Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu) and I plan to continue competing in the sport for quite a few more years!