Page 14 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 93, No. 2 Winter 2013

12
Whatever Heitmiller and assistants Tim
Caryl-Klika and Aaron Marsh ’97 are doing,
it works. The program has not experienced
a losing season in more than a decade. It
has produced 11 All-Americans and two
national champions. The 2011-12 squad
won the Graves-Kelsey Tournament (and
the overall ISL team championship) for
the first time since 1983. This year’s squad
finished the regular season at 15-4, placed
third in the ISL, boasted three individual
league champs, and sent five wrestlers to
Nationals in Pennsylvania.
What further distinguishes the SPS
wrestling program is that well over 50 per-
cent of Heitmiller’s charges, year after year,
are homegrown, arriving at St. Paul’s with
little or no previous wrestling experience.
“You have to be patient, want to work
club soccer in favor of varsity cross coun-
try and found success as a coxswain with
the first SPS crew. He has since become
an endurance-sport fanatic, completing
an Ironman triathlon in 2006 and com-
peting as a marathoner. But nothing, he
insists, compares with the strain and
pure mental and physical toughness
required in wrestling.
“The longer-distance nature of those
other events means I’m sustaining an
intensity level that is much lower than
for wrestling – my Ironman training
was easier,” he says, understanding how
that sounds. “Two minutes to me, now,
seems like nothing, especially since I’ve
moved into events of longer duration.
How bad could 120 seconds be? Those
rounds included some of the most intense
hard, and be willing to pay your dues,”
Heitmiller explains. “If you are a new
wrestler, you’re probably going to get
beat up all the time that first year. But it
eventually starts clicking and you find out
how to push yourself. That’s what wres-
tling is about; it exposes the pure nature
of competing. The hard part is that there
is nobody to blame – you only have your-
self to look at if you don’t do well.”
Recruited as a Fourth Former to the
112-pound weight class by Heitmiller,
Wookie Kim ’05 followed friend David
Yahng ’05 into the sport. A self-pro-
claimed “disliker of sports” when he
arrived at SPS, Kim soon discovered
that he coveted the shared struggle of
wrestling. His competitive drive trans-
ferred to other areas of his life; he dropped
“
“
This is a sport for any size. Look at some of the
most successful wrestlers – you can’t judge it
by how they look. Some of the strongest kids
are the worst wrestlers. You have to have a
whole lot more than muscle to be a good wrestler.
– Scott Heitmiller ’81
“
KATIE BARNES