Wrestler finds success despite his disabilities
By Ben Smith
The Journal Gazette
The draw sheet will tell you that Tim Meney of Northwestern High School, 119 pounds and a senior, lost in the first round of the New Haven wrestling semistate Saturday morning, losing by a point to Marcus Miller of Muncie Southside.
Just another bloodless result in bloodless small type, you might think. Just one more kid going home early, no different than the 105 others who yanked off the headgear after one round and shed defeated tears.
So how come Tim Meney’s defeat still felt like triumph?
How come his coach, Steve Swinson, could still smile and tell you, not long after Meney left Memorial Coliseum on Saturday, that the kid finished his high school career with 98 wins? How come a bit of awe crept into his voice, when he recited one more result?
“Since birth, he’s had 16 surgeries for either eyesight or hearing or cleft palate,” Swinson informs. “But you would never know it, because he’s not a complainer. He doesn’t want any sympathy for it.”
Instead, he elicits only wonder. Partially deaf, 80 percent blind in one eye and 10 percent in the other, Meney nonetheless has been wrestling since middle school, dropping out one year because he thought he was too small.
He came back as an undersized 103-pounder his sophomore year, struggling mightily because he weighed just 95 pounds. But last year he reached the semistate, and this year he did it again, finishing his season with a 36-8 record.
“He sees better than you think,” Swinson says. “When he hears your voice at a distance, he’ll make pretty good eye contact with you. He sees a little bit of color, shapes, sizes stuff like that. I don’t think he’s labeled visually impaired so much, but he’s borderline.”
Wrestling, therefore, seems the perfect fit for him, relying as it does less on visual acuity than pressure and touch and feel.
Swinson says he’s more comfortable “if he’s controlling your wrist or controlling your elbows,” and it’s tough for him sometimes differentiating one whistle from another in matches.
“So most referees, when they blow the whistle, will also tap him,” Swinson says.
So accepting of his fate is Meney “his physical disabilities have been present since birth “that Swinson never knew about all the surgeries until Meney’s story appeared in the Kokomo Tribune on Saturday morning. It wasn’t the first time he’d surprised someone, nor was it the last on Saturday.
“Yeah, everybody figured he’d get pinned or majority-decisioned, going up against Miller,” Swinson said, noting that the Muncie South wrestler came in with a 28-2 record. “But he only lost by a point. He wrestled him tough.”
Call it one more triumph.
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