All in the family: a passion for wrestling

Two sets of brothers take the sport home

By Amalie Benjamin, Globe Staff | January 13, 2005

READING — Crash.

Not again, Karen Pinette usually thinks, as she talks on the phone or fixes dinner. She understands exactly what has happened, because it isn’t the first time. And, as she well knows, it won’t be the last.

The boys are in the living room again, thrashing around on the floor. Perhaps the family’s black Lab has joined in. Perhaps it’s her husband.

She has bred wrestlers, through no fault of her own, and now she must deal with the consequences.

“Wrestling in my living room takes place almost on a daily basis, “Karen said. “It sounds like herds of elephants. All of this confusion in my living room. . . . They’ve broken a few glass objects. Thank heavens there are a lot of things that tumble that don’t break. There may be a lot of things that break that I don’t know about.”

It has been passed down through her athletic trio of sons. Marc to Sean. Sean to Ryan. Football started the whole thing, actually. Wrestling wasn’t even on the Pinette family radar before Marc, the eldest of the three brothers, played on the freshman football team three years ago for a certain Tom Darrin, also the wrestling coach at Reading High School.

“Marc will be teaching us moves and we just start wrestling, “Ryan begins, about the in-the-house encounters. “And it becomes like a royal rumble, “finishes Sean, who has patented a special yell that should indicate to anyone in the house (or outside it) that the bout needs to be stopped. It’s his fail-safe.

In the days before the living room wrestling became a once-a-day event at the Pinette house, before Marc’s initial splashdown on the mats, the sport wasn’t a passion for the family. They barely knew it existed and certainly didn’t know the rules.

“The first time, as a mother, you go out and watch your son get his arms bent back and hit and slammed, as a mother you’re horrified, “Karen said. “As you see how much time they put into training, you can’t help but get involved. It’s just a different sport.”

They’re not like the Fodera brothers, the other set of three siblings on the Rockets squad. Joe, Jim and Gio — as well as cousin Frank, also on the team — come from a long line of wrestlers. Uncles dragged them into the sport. Their participation was expected.

Both sets of brothers include a senior (Marc and Joe), sophomore (Sean and Jim) and freshman (Ryan and Gio), though there are four younger Fodera brothers who will probably, in turn, don their own singlets.

Two years into Marc’s wrestling education, Sean appeared at Reading without a winter sport. The gangly, streamlined teenager would fit the role perfectly, Marc thought. The team was lacking a wrestler at the lowest weight class, 103 pounds, and — even if he wasn’t any good — at least Sean would prevent the Rockets from forfeiting that slot and a guaranteed six points at each meet.

At the end of the year, he was joining Marc in the postseason, finishing sixth at sectionals.

Ryan took far less convincing. He started youth wrestling in seventh grade and slid into the 112-pound space at the beginning of this year, making all three Pinette brothers starters.

With Marc’s solid, thicker build — he wrestles at 189 or 215 pounds, usually — there’s rarely competition between him and the younger Pinettes. But Sean and Ryan — nicknamed “Stick Stickly “and “Chicken Legs, “respectively, by their father — seem intent on taking each other on in practice. As Darrin guides his team in drills, practiced all over the mats in one-on-one bouts, the two are wrapped around each other, performing their own moves one day early last week.

As their whip-thin bodies scramble around, it’s hard to imagine either one having to scrimp to lose weight. But, like many wrestlers, both Sean and Ryan have had to cut pounds to reach their wrestling level, something Marc has never had to do. At times last year, Sean was limited to such meals as half an orange and some water. The first time Ryan weighed in at varsity this year, the scale ticked a half-pound over his 112 limit. He had to run in the morning. It was not an experience he wants to repeat.

“We eat much healthier during wrestling season as a family, “Karen said. “We try to tailor our meals so they fit the wrestling schedule if they need it. . . . If you tell them they have to lose a tenth of a pound, you’d think they were starving to death.”

Darrin, the coach, is more than happy to fill out his roster with last-name multiples. He’d welcome more Pinettes (if there were any) and will certainly take the rest of the Foderas into his fieldhouse wrestling room.

“I’m very much a believer that it should be a family program, that everybody should be involved, “Darrin said. “It’s not uncommon in wrestling for the brothers to stay in the sport. Of course, as a coach you love that because the younger brothers usually pick a lot up from the older brothers.”

As Marc and Joe lead the way, Darrin’s family-style program looks pretty good for the future — especially with all those little brothers learning skill after skill from their siblings.