Jesse Jantzen is quite possibly the most prolific wrestler in Long Island history. While at Shoreham-Wading River High School, Jesse compiled a record of 221-3, with all 3 losses coming prior to 9th grade. Jantzen is the only 6x Suffolk County Champion in history. In 1999 he became only the 2nd Long Island wrestler to win 3 NY State titles, and followed it up in 2000 by becoming the first wrestler in state history to win 4 NY State titles. Jesse is one of 7 Long Island wrestlers to win the High School Senior National Championship; he was named MOW of the event in 2000 where he won his match in the finals by technical fall. Jesse won the 2000 Junior Nationals and was named the 2000 Asics National High School Wrestler of the Year, become only the second Long Islander to win the Award.
Jantzen continued his career at Harvard University where he was a 3x NCAA All-American, a feat he was only the 2nd Ivy League wrestler to accomplish. During the 2003-2004 season Jantzen went undefeated in the 149 pound weight class and won the NCAA Championship by defeating Zach Esposito from Oklahoma State. Jesse was Harvard’s first NCAA Wrestling Champion since 1938. Jesse was the 12th wrestler from Long Island and the 8th from Section XI to win an NCAA Championship.
After graduating from Harvard in 2004, Jesse has concentrated on freestyle wrestling. He won the 2005 University level World Championships. Jantzen also took 4th place at the 2005 World Team Trials and 6th place at the 2005 US Senior Nationals.
Jesse recently discussed his career accomplishments as well as his future goals with Bill Faxon, exclusively for the Long Island Wrestling Association.
LIWA: So what are you up to these days?
Jantzen: I’m still living in Boston; ever since I graduated I’ve been helping to coach up there. I’ve basically been training full-time for tournaments throughout the year, the World Championships each year and ultimately the Olympics in 2008.
LIWA: One of the top recruits in New York, JP O’Connor, recently committed to wrestle for Harvard next year. Did you talk to him at all in the recruiting process?
Jantzen: I’ve spoken to him because I helped coach New York’s Junior National team. I don’t know if I was a factor in his decision or not, I kind of just told him my experience at Harvard and how much I enjoyed it. He seems like a great kid and he’s obviously a really talented wrestler as well. We’re definitely excited to have him on the team next year.
LIWA: Another wrestler that looked at Harvard but ultimately went to Cornell was Troy Nickerson. Last season a big deal was made of the fact that Nickerson was going for his 5th New York state title, which would break your record. Did you ever speak to Troy while this was going on, do you have any kind of relationship?
Jantzen: I don’t know him really well, but I did speak to him. I used to see him at tournaments where my little brother was competing. We definitely wanted him to come to Harvard, it was between a couple of schools and ultimately he made his decision. I think he would have had to take the SATs one more time and get them {his scores} up a little bit to get into Harvard. We would have loved to have him, he’s a great wrestler and a good student as well. I liked him a lot.
LIWA: And as far as his 5 state titles breaking your record of 4?
Jantzen: I wasn’t really too concerned about it, I knew it was just a matter of time. Records are going to be broken. I was kind of focused on my career at that point and not looking to live in the glory days of high school. I couldn’t be happier for him, but it doesn’t really matter to me.
LIWA: Speaking of the state tournament, and this is something that has impacted your brother Corey because he’s been on both sides of it, what are your thoughts on New York moving to the 2 Division System?
Jantzen: I personally don’t like the way that they split it up. I think there are many better ways to do it. I’d rather them have one tournament but have more qualifiers from each Section. I know Pennsylvania and other states have regional qualifiers where you get more fair representation.
Suffolk County generally has some pretty good wrestlers and there are some other Sections that are a little weaker and they get the same representation but their guys don’t wind up doing as well.
I’d like to see it similar to college. Depending on how you do the year before at the NCAAs you get a certain number of bids to the following years NCAA tournament. That would be more efficient for the state tournament so more wrestlers get to compete, and the Sections that are doing better get to send more representatives.
Right now there is such a disparity between the two classes because there aren’t many small schools on Long Island.
LIWA: Ultimately wrestling is an individual sport, but there is also a team component, a team score. Your high school team at SWR never finished higher than 3rd in the Section XI Tournament, and your Harvard teams weren’t among the elite national teams in college. Do you ever feel you missed out by not being part of a championship caliber team?
Jantzen: My freshman year at Harvard we had a pretty good team, we won the conference and beat teams like Lehigh but that was probably the last time in college that we were really competitive. And my high school team was competitive in our league, but definitely not a national powerhouse.
That’s nice to be on a team where you’re doing well, but I’ve enjoyed all my teammates and I’ve been in some real good situations and I wouldn’t trade the experiences that I’ve had.
LIWA: Ivy League schools do not allow a redshirt season, so you only had 4 years at Harvard while many of your competitors wrestled for 5 years in college. Do you ever think that if you would have gone somewhere you could have redshirted that maybe you would have a 2nd NCAA title, maybe being a 4x All-American?
Jantzen: I wanted to wrestle as a true freshman even if I was going to a Big 10 school. I think anytime that you are healthy and if you think you are ready than you should wrestle. What happens sometimes is that you redshirt when you’re perfectly healthy and then the next year you get hurt. I think I could have done better my freshman year regardless, it’s a big adjustment, but I wouldn’t trade my decision. My situation at Harvard was really good for me as far as the competition, and I’m not sure that I would have done better anywhere else.
LIWA: When you decided to go to Harvard you really didn’t see a lot of top wrestlers, at least not in New York, going to Ivy League schools. The next year, after you graduated, a pair of New York state champs signed with Cornell, then Matt Herrington to Penn as well as Nickerson and O’Connor to Cornell and Harvard, among many others. Do you think you started a trend?
Jantzen: I’m not sure. Maybe guys saw that you can go to one of the better academic schools and still achieve your goals as a wrestler. I think it has become a trend, that more and more of the top wrestlers are going to Ivy League schools. I don’t think it’s just because of me; Travis Lee certainly opened some doors for Cornell.
LIWA: Massachusetts in general isn’t a huge wrestling state and Harvard has a long wrestling history, but maybe not the most distinguished history. You became the first Harvard wrestler to win an NCAA title since before World War II. Did people on campus notice, was it a big deal?
Jantzen: I got some interviews, some local TV networks. They definitely recognized it and made me feel good about it. They made a big deal out of it; I got a letter from the school president.
LIWA: The school president is nice, but did you get a letter from Natalie Portman?
Jantzen: I wish. There was that rumor going around for a little while, she probably thought that I was a stalker.
LIWA: By the time you are a junior or senior at Shoreham Wading River you are, if not the best, certainly one of the best wrestlers in the entire country. How did you get a workout on a day to day basis?
Jantzen: My buddy Mike Torriero was right nearby, he was one of the top guys in the country. He wound up taking 6th or 7th at High School nationals. I would travel around a little bit for partners, but Mike was right in Rocky Point so that was convenient. I would also go in on the weekends and go with some local coaches to get better workouts.
Day in and day out you don’t need someone that is going real hard with you or kicking your butt on a daily basis. I had some good partners at Shoreham, maybe not someone that was going even with me, but someone I could get a good workout with.
LIWA: Speaking of Mike Torriero, your senior year you basically pinned or teched everyone that you came in contact with. You won by technical fall in the state finals and the national finals. You pinned or teched 6 wrestlers in the national tournament. One of the very few matches late in your high school career that you DIDN’T win by pin or tech was when you faced Torriero in a dual meet. You won by 14, one point short of a technical fall. Did you take a knee late in that match so as not to tech your friend, or was the whole thing on the level?
Jantzen: You’re not the first person to ask me that, but I wrestled as hard as I could. Mike wouldn’t want that. I mean, if it’s 14 or 15 what’s the difference?
We didn’t want to wrestle that day, but it’s just the way that it worked out. He was one weight lighter but his coach bumped him up. You know how it is with Rocky Point and Shoreham, as far as local rivalries go that’s about it. We wanted to win the dual meet, and if I bumped away from Mike we might lose.
Plus we’re both competitive, and it probably helped us both out in the long run to get that kind of competition in a match. But I wrestled that match as hard as I could have.
LIWA: You were part of a pretty special group of middle weights all on Long Island at the same time. Aside from Torriero, you eventually wrestled Jon Masa and Mike Patrovich. You never wrestled Ryan Maurer in an official match, but did you guys ever lock up behind closed doors?
Jantzen: In practice we wrestled. He was talented; he was every bit as talented as the other guys you mentioned. I’m not sure what he’s doing right now, I don’t think he’s wrestling much. If he would have stayed with it in college he would have done extremely well.
LIWA: Greg Parker was a lot bigger than you in college, he made the NCAA finals at 174 and was an All-American at 184, so people tend to forget that you guys actually met up in a NY State final in high school, a match that you won by major decision. What do you remember about Parker and that match?
Jantzen: He had a really weird style. I always thought he was going to be good, but it’s hard to say how someone is going to do at the next level; I didn’t even know what I was going to do. He had a really weird style, he was so flexible and long and he really honed in on those strengths. It wasn’t surprising to me that he did as well in college as he did.
LIWA: Your father was one of the coaches at Shoreham and you’ve said that he was a big influence. One of the other coaches was Paul Jendrewski. Jendrewski recently retired, leaving behind a pretty impressive coaching resume. While your father was the technician, teaching the X’s and O’s of wrestling, what impact did Jendrewski have on you and the team?
Jantzen: He was a great guy. You’re right, my dad ran the practice from a wrestling perspective but J always kept everyone up, kept everyone in a good mood, kept it light. Wrestling is such a long season and it’s so mentally grueling, that it’s important to have someone like J that would always make you crack a smile.
Without him we wouldn’t have had too many guys in the room. Growing up everyone liked him, and people came out for the team because of him, because they wanted to be around him. He would get you fired up before matches, but he also had that contagious personality that people always wanted to be around.
LIWA: You are the type of wrestler that people enjoy watching, because you are explosive, because you put opponents on their back. Which wrestlers have YOU enjoyed watching as a wrestler and a wrestling fan?
Jantzen: I like a lot of people. Brian Snyder from Nebraska, who also coached at Harvard, was a guy that I liked because he was so aggressive. I like guys who want to shoot and score the entire time they are on the mat.
I love watching Cael Sanderson. He’s just constantly trying to score points. If he’s up by 14 with 5 seconds left against the best guy in the country he’s still trying to score. Even I have occasions where I think, I have the lead, let’s stall this out and win. But you never see Cael do that. His relentless style is pretty impressive and pretty inspiring.
LIWA: What’s the biggest win of your career?
Jantzen: Probably this summer, winning the University World Championships. I beat a guy that just took 3rd in the real, Senior World Championships. He’s been really competitive on the international level for years and I beat him in the quarterfinals. Winning that tournament was a big win for me and my career.
LIWA: And in folkstyle?
Jantzen: My senior year of college, winning the championship.
LIWA: You beat Zach Esposito for the championship. You’ve also wrestled Hofstra’s Jon Masa on many occasions; they are ranked #1 and #2 right now. You’re probably as qualified as anyone to answer this; can Masa beat Esposito for the NCAA championship?
Jantzen: I think he can. I think anyone can beat anyone. They’re the 2 top guys in that weight class, so it’s not out of the question. Esposito has proven himself to be the top guy right now, he’s definitely earned it, but Jon is as talented as anyone I know, and on any given day he could win it all.
LIWA: We talked about your biggest win, is there one loss in particular that bothers you?
Jantzen: I get along with Jared Lawrence, I think he’s a great guy, but losing that match in the NCAAs my junior year was tough. I kind of thought that was my year to break through. That loss in my junior year semis was probably the most disappointing one.
LIWA: You mention Jared Lawrence, who you are now competing against in freestyle, but you’ve yet to beat. You’ve had some success against Eric Larkin and Doug Schwab, but you haven’t beaten Lawrence or Chris Bono yet. What can you tell us about you and the other top freestyle wrestlers?
Jantzen: I’ve beaten Frayer in freestyle once, but I haven’t beaten Lawrence or Bono yet. I’m knocking on the door, I think I’ve closed the gap. The last time I wrestled Bono we had a good match. I think I’m in the mix, and I’m improving which is good.
LIWA: You’ve been at this weight class, 145, since your junior year of high school. Has it gotten tough to make the weight?
Jantzen: In high school I didn’t cut much weight, that was basically what I weighed. Now I’ve gotten heavier and put on some muscle. It’s gotten a little tougher; last year was probably my toughest year. But I’m going to be strict with my diet over the next couple of years so it shouldn’t be that big of a deal.
LIWA: There was a thought for a while that you were better suited to folkstyle because of how good you were on top, your riding. Do you think you’ve adjusted to freestyle?
Jantzen: I think I have. I like freestyle; it’s something that I’ve been doing since I started wrestling. I probably started freestyle first, because there are more tournaments than folkstyle when you’re younger. They change the rules so frequently that it’s not that hard to pick it up, because basically everyone has to keep going back to the drawing board. Hopefully they’ll keep the rules more steady so at least the fans can follow it better.
LIWA: Do you see yourself staying involved in wrestling after your days as a competitor are over?
Jantzen: I do see myself being involved, but maybe not as a coach. My little brother is coming up and he still competes, so I definitely want to be involved with him. I want to help him out, coach him. I don’t necessarily see coaching as a career, but I’ll be involved with wrestling in some capacity.
LIWA: Will you wrestle past 2008?
Jantzen: That’s just what I’m focused on right now. It’s kind of hard to say if I’ll be done or not. Now that they have this Real Pro Wrestling, and depending on if that’s still around and how it’s doing, I’m going to try and do that for as long as it’s around.
But right now my focus in on 2008 and the Olympics.
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