USA WRESTLI N G SUCCESS ST ORI E S


“When sports are done as they should be, the student-athletes hopefully pick up a set of qualities that are useful in any environment. That’s why athletics are important.” –JIM JORDAN


SELF-DISCIPLINE


Jim Jordan, a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio originally elected in 2006, is 51 years old. But it doesn’t take him long to get transported in his mind back more than three decades, to his high school wrestling days at Graham High School in St. Paris, Ohio. His former coach, Ron McCunn, also taught


chemistry and physics. Jordan says he was the most demanding teacher in the school and the most de- manding coach in the state. “In the wrestling room, he talked about self-dis-


cipline. I can still hear him, talking about it over and over,” Jordan says. “There was a banner that read: ‘Discipline is doing what you don’t want to do when you don’t want to do it.’”


That discipline helped Jordan become a four- time high school state champ and, later, a two-time NCAA champion at the University of Wisconsin. That discipline lives on; Jordan’s former school


has now won 15 consecutive team state champion- ships in Ohio, most of them under the direction of Jeff Jordan—Jim’s brother—who took over for Mc- Cunn in the early 2000s. That discipline lives on in Jim Jordan’s everyday life, as a politician. “When sports are done as they should be, the student-athletes hopefully pick up a set of qualities that are useful in any environment. That’s why athletics are important,” Jordan says. “Obviously I’m biased, but I think wrestling is one of the best of those sports in teaching values good for our culture and country and serve individuals well.” That applies to everyone from CEOs to teachers, Jordan says—and it certainly is true when trying to defeat an opponent in a political campaign. “That’s as close to a wrestling match as you


can get,” says Jordan, noting that he talks about wrestling often with other political figures, in- cluding Rumsfeld and U.S. Senator John Mc- Cain. “The guy with the most votes wins.”


CONFIDENCE


Al Franken, a Democrat and U.S. Senator from Minnesota, remembers his sophomore year of high school at the Blake School in the Minne- apolis suburbs. He deemed himself too short for basketball, but found that his short build would work to his advantage in one sport: wrestling.


“I weighed 103 pounds, and it looked like a


sport where if you weighed 103 pounds, it didn’t matter,” Franken says of his foray into wrestling. “I enjoyed the sport, though I wasn’t a great wrestler. I was a mediocre wrestler.” Still, sometimes the struggle is worth it in the


long run. “Wrestling is one of those sports where, to be successful at all, you have to have a work ethic,” Franken says. “And like in politics, you have to be self-disciplined but you also have to be a good team player sometimes.”


That would play out many years later. He took an unusual path to politics. Most notably, work- ing as a writer and performer on “Saturday Night Live” for many years and, after that, in a variety of other media jobs before announcing in 2007 that he was running for a seat in the U.S. Senate. In an excruciatingly tight race that eventually


came down to a months-long recount, Franken ended up eking by incumbent Norm Coleman by just a few hundred votes. “[Wrestling] gives you confidence, too, that if


you’re in a [tough] situation there’s no reason you can’t handle yourself,” Franken says. Franken joked that he and his Senate col- leagues practice takedowns on the Senate floor. While he wasn’t serious, he did go to the mat for the sport recently when the International Olym- pic Committee attempted to drop wrestling from the Summer Games.


REP. JIM JOR- DAN (R-OH)


WAS A FOUR- TIME STATE HIGH SCHOOL CHAMPION


AND TWO-TIME NCAA CHAM- PION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN.


“That was ridiculous,” he says.“I associate wres- tling with the Greeks, and taking it out of the Olympics is sacrilege. What are the Olympics supposed to be about if not for the sports that have been there since the time of the original Olympics?”


PERSEVERENCE


As a city council member for more than 20 years and a five-time mayor of Daly City, Calif., Mike Guingona can trace the roots of his career path back to wrestling. It’s a sport he still gives back to. Like Franken, Guingona was undersized in high school—just 5-foot-2 and 95 pounds as a freshman. But he took up wrestling, endured a series of early defeats and resolved to get better. Eventually, he became league champion. That resolve to improve was amplified in col-


lege, when he wrestled for Olympian Lee Allen at Skyline College in California. “I got better and better,” Guingona recalls.


“All you had to do was just be there longer and work harder. So I did that. I might not be the biggest or strongest, but the one thing I could control was how much time I could put into it.” That relentlessness carried him through law


school, into politics, and back to wrestling, where he now coaches his son, Kai. It also inspires him to keep reaching for new heights, as Guingona recently decided to seek election to an office be- yond the city limits of Daly City as a member of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors. “I really think I wouldn’t have been able to get


DALY CITY COUNCILMAN MIKE GUINONA OF CALIFORNIA NOW COACHES HIS SON, KAI.


where I am today without the ability to set a goal and be totally obsessive about doing it,” Guingo- na says. “We look at time as a precious resource. Every day we’re not using it to get better, it’s get- ting used against us. I really bought into that.” That’s no surprise. Buying into working hard and using time wisely is a common thread with so many wrestlers—and has launched those who eventually went into politics, be it a century ago or present day, to great success.


USA Wrestler 41


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