WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Gruenwald’s persistence still paying off in big way
By Gary Abbott Two-time Greco-Roman Olympian
Jim Gruenwald’s interest in wrestling started after a fight with a friend in sixth grade. Gruenwald thought he was doing OK when he landed a few punches, but then his friend took a leg shot, turned it into a wrestling match, and it was all over for him. “He later invited me to wrestling practice. I remember we had a six- week clinic. We had a wrestle-off and I lost it. The next year, I had four matches. By eighth grade, I got into both the folkstyle and the freestyle part of wrestling. I had been involved in other sports, but by the time I was a freshman in high school, I was mostly wrestling,” said Gruenwald. But ask him why he enjoyed wrestling, and even today, Jim Gruenwald can’t pinpoint an answer. “It is one of those things that is hard to explain. Something
pulled me in. Once I started, I never looked back. It seemed like something I should be doing,” he said. Gruenwald developed into a top high school star in Wisconsin, winning a state title as a junior and placing second as a sophomore and senior. Gruenwald was also a Junior National Greco-Roman runner-up. He credits high school coach Rob Carlson, a love of weight training and the challenge of com- petition as fueling his development. “Every year in the summer, I wrestled a lot and loved it. When
I got going in eighth and ninth grade, I went to every tournament I could. I loved competing and loved the intense setting. I’d get 30 matches during the season, but over the summers, I’d get 60 more matches. During the week, I’d lift weights. On the week- ends, I’d wrestle,” he said. Gruenwald’s college decision was not based upon wrestling.
He ended up going to Maranatha Baptist Bible College in Wisconsin, which had a wrestling team coached by Olympic champion Ben Peterson. “I didn’t know Ben Peterson that well at all. Ben being an Olympic champion didn’t resonate with me. I also thought about some Div. I schools. Because Maranatha was a Christian school, my mom wanted me to try it for a year. About half way through my first year, Ben asked me if I was using Maranatha as a springboard to a bigger school. It was about then when I realized that God wanted me to be there,” said Gruenwald. Peterson was an excellent coach for Gruenwald, not just because of his abilities as a wrestler but also as a mentor and personal role model. The fact that Peterson was a freestyle star did not stop Gruenwald from pursuing Greco-Roman, a style he learned to love in high school. When Jim’s college wrestling eligibility ended, he still needed to complete the math degree that he wanted. In his mind, his
32 USA Wrestler
wrestling career was over. However, his mother had some other ideas. “My mom challenged me in a non-confrontational way. She
said she was not sure that was what God wanted for me. She reminded me that in high school, I said I wanted to be an Olympic champion. She said I hadn’t even tried for that,” said Gruenwald. World Greco-Roman champion Mike Houck was an assistant
coach at Maranatha for a year, and he got to know Gruenwald. Houck later became USA Wrestling’s Greco-Roman National Coach. Gruenwald reached out to Houck about his interest in Greco. After Gruenwald won a gold medal at the U.S. Olympic Festival in Greco-Roman, Houck recruited him for the new U.S. Olympic Training Center resident program in Colorado Springs. “When I got there, I felt out of place. There were all these Div.
I wrestlers there, and some very good Div. II wrestlers also. I originally felt that the only reason I was there was because Mike Houck knew me. In my mind, every day I had to prove I was worthy to be there,” said Gruenwald. He quickly developed into one of the nation’s top competitors
in his weight class. To tell the Jim Gruenwald story, you also need to tell the Dennis Hall story. They were rivals back in their high school and became regular opponents in Senior Greco- Roman. It may not have seemed like a rivalry to Hall, because Hall won all the bouts. Hall beat Gruenwald in the finals of the Wisconsin state championships, and after their senior year, Hall beat Gruenwald by pin in the finals of the Junior Nationals. That pattern contin- ued at the highest levels of American Greco-Roman wrestling. “I had an 11-year losing streak. I didn’t beat him in a match
until 1998. People told me that once I beat him, that it would turn the tide, but that is not how that worked out,” said Gruenwald. Gruenwald faced Hall in the prime of his amazing career. Hall
was a 1995 World champion, a 1996 Olympic silver medalist and won 10 straight U.S. Open titles. Jim’s first win came in the first match of the 1998 World Team
Trials finals, but Hall swept the next two bouts. In 1999, Hall won the first bout at Trials and Gruenwald won the second. Once again, it was Hall who won the third match handily. That continued into the finals of the 2000 Olympic Team Trials in Dallas, Texas, where Gruenwald once again faced Dennis Hall. Hall won the first match on a throw, but Gruenwald responded
with a win in bout two. At the start of the third match, Hall jumped to a three-point lead. “I remember going to the corner of the mat and talking with
God. I said ‘I’ve been training, eating the right food, getting my rest, doing everything right. I am leaving this in your hands.’ I walked back out and scored the next eight points and made the Olympic team,” said Gruenwald. How did Gruenwald survive the 11-year drought against a Hall Continued on page 36
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