By Don Doxsie
There have been times when Sean Mizlo thought he had it pretty bad. And let’s face it, you wouldn’t wish his plight on anyone.
The United Township High School assistant wrestling coach had a leg amputated last July after a horrific motorcycle accident a few blocks from his home in East Moline.
He has remained remarkably upbeat, but there have been daily frustrations as he’s struggled to cope with his new handicap. There were moments when mild depression gave way to outright despair.
Then he met Nick Ackerman.
Ackerman is employed by American Prosthetics in Davenport. He helped make the artificial leg that Mizlo wears.
Ackerman doesn’t have any legs himself, and he’s been that way since the age of 18 months. But he hasn’t let that stop him from leading a normal life.
And he didn’t let it stop him from becoming a big-time athlete. In 2001, he won the NCAA Division III wrestling championship at 174 pounds.
Although Mizlo is a lifelong wrestling fan, he didn’t know who Ackerman was.
“But I was amazed by his story and what he has accomplished,” Mizlo said.
On Tuesday, he brought Ackerman into the UT wrestling room to chat with the members of the Panthers team on the eve of their season.
Almost 30 kids piled into the room for practice. A few sprawled out on the black mats, but most leaned against the wall. You almost could read their faces as they gathered. When is this going to be over? When do we get to wrestle?
They were introduced to Ackerman and told he was an NCAA champion at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. He is a tall, robust man, still in great shape. They probably assumed him to be a heavyweight.
Then Ackerman hiked up both pant legs to reveal his prosthetics.
A few of the kids sat up a little straighter, but some never changed expressions as Ackerman told his story.
Today is a day when most of us will give thanks for the things we have, but many of us spend the other 364 days of the year grousing about the problems in our lives.
It’s obvious that Ackerman has adopted the opposite tact. Every day is Thanksgiving to him. He’s hardly spent a second of his life lamenting the fact that he wasn’t blessed with the same physical gifts as others.
His philosophy is simple: “If you don’t make a big deal out of it, it won’t be a big deal.”
As an infant in Colfax, Iowa, he contracted a form of bacterial meningitis. It affected his circulation and turned his hands and legs black. The doctors had no choice. The only way to save his life was to lop off his infected legs just below the knees.
It didn’t keep him from taking up wrestling in the third grade.
“That’s what you do in a small town in Iowa,” Ackerman told the UT kids. “You pig-farm and you wrestle.”
It didn’t matter to him that all the other wrestlers had two legs.
“I grew up hunting and fishing and doing all sorts of things like that “¦” he said. “My parents encouraged me to go out and do things where I might get hurt ” climb trees or whatever.”
He wasn’t a great high school wrestler, but he qualified for the state meet as a senior. In one of his first matches in Des Moines, he suffered a broken arm. He managed to win two more matches after that and finished sixth in the state.
At Simpson, he took some time to work his way into the lineup. After his sophomore year he won the National Wrestling Hall of Fame’s Medal of Courage. As a junior, he almost qualified for the NCAA D-III tournament.
Prior to his senior year, he tried a new tactic. Every day, he stood in front of the bathroom mirror and told himself he was going to become a national champion.
“I stood there with my toothbrush every day and said it,” Ackerman said in his talk with Mizlo’s protégés. “In the beginning, you laugh at yourself because you’re looking in the mirror and talking to yourself.”
In the middle of his senior season, he won 24 matches in a row, then lost to his two chief rivals in the Iowa Conference Duals in Dubuque. After a long, soul-searching bus ride back to Indianola, he found a letter waiting for him from his girlfriend. She was dumping him.
“That day really kind of put me in my place,” he said. “I was really kind of bummed. It was like ‘Where do I go from here?’ ”
He qualified for the nationals with a second-place conference finish a few weeks later, but he didn’t do as well as he could have. As he left the mat, he talked to Iowa wrestling legend Dan Gable, who pointed out that he didn’t even attempt to take down his foe in the final period.
“I thought about that for a whole week,” Ackerman said. “I realized that if you don’t take your shot, you can’t win.”
He remembered that in the national semifinals. After trailing 1-0, he scored a takedown with seven seconds left to win.
In the finals, he faced Nick Slack of Augsburg, the defending national champ and winner of 60 straight matches.
All those hours in front of the mirror paid off. Ackerman won 13-11.
There were some parts of the story that he didn’t even tell the UT kids. He didn’t tell them that the fans in Waterloo’s Young Arena gave him a two-minute standing ovation or that Gable came over and asked for his autograph. He didn’t tell them that he shared the Hodge Award ” wrestling’s answer to the Heisman ” with Iowa State’s Cael Sanderson.
“Five years later, I still get to talk about it,” he told his audience. “It all comes from believing in yourself. You know that if you look in that mirror and say it enough, you can do it. You can do anything.”
It wasn’t immediately clear how many of the UT kids got the message. Some were still looking at the ceiling and fidgeting at the finish. But Mizlo said he thought most of them got it.
“They were amazed by Nick,” he said. “Here’s a guy who is a double amputee and he won a championship. A couple of my varsity kids were asking about him after practice. I think he gave some kids some hope.”
Ackerman said he hoped he made connections with a few.
“Maybe some of them will realize that maybe they don’t have it so bad, that maybe some of the obstacles in front of them aren’t that big a deal,” he said.
“If you don’t take your shot in life,” he added, “doors are not going to open for you.”
Don Doxsie can be contacted at (563) 383-2280 or [email protected].
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