Lehigh senior places third, then hushes crowd by retiring.
By Gary R. Blockus
Of The Morning Call
ST. LOUIS, Mo. | Jon Trenge sat at the edge of the mat quickly, quietly, before the referee even could raise his hand in victory. The Lehigh senior held his wrestling shoes for one last moment as the Savvis Center crowd momentarily hushed.
Trenge, the greatest wrestler in the history of Parkland High School, lifted the shoes, kissed them, and placed them in the center of the wrestling circle. Then he cast down his trademark eye goggles and headgear.
Trenge began his career at age 10 in the center of a mat similar to the one used during the 2005 NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships. In a somber moment after his 12-1 victory over Oklahoma’s Joel Flaggert, Trenge ended his career at the same place, the middle of the mat, with his hand raised in victory but his shoes off his feet, wrestling’s international sign of retirement.
”All being done now, I’m happy with what I did,” said Trenge, came back from a stunning loss in Friday night’s semifinals to win the bronze medal at 197 pounds. ”I know I put everything I had into it since I was 10.”
Trenge, who joined teammates Troy Letters (165) and Cory Cooperman (141) in winning bronze medals, finished his career with everything but an NCAA title. He won two PIAA Class 3A championships and junior national and Junior Olympic titles in freestyle and Greco-Roman.
He also wrestled internationally, competing on various U.S. freestyle teams. But the three-time collegiate All-American and two-time NCAA finalist refused to lament never winning the college title.
”I guess it wasn’t in the cards,” Trenge said, ”but I think it will make me a better coach in the future, knowing what it’s like to fail and not getting everything easy. I had to work pretty hard for everything I got ” and everything I didn’t get.”
Trenge admitted that he faced some difficult obstacles in achieving his dreams. Trenge and his brother were raised by their father with no mother figure around. He also suffered detached and torn retinas in his early years at Lehigh.
”When I first started [in college], I said I want to be a four-time champion. Right,” he said. ”Then I saw how hard it was. I could have won it any one of those years, except when Cael moved up.”
Cael, of course, is Cael Sanderson of Iowa State, the only undefeated four-time champion in NCAA history. Sanderson, who won an Olympic gold medal in Athens, defeated Trenge in the 2002 NCAA final.
Trenge took a redshirt last season to attempt to qualify for the U.S. Olympic team. Because of his extreme nearsightedness, Trenge is highly susceptible to retinal tears. Doctors advised him to stop wrestling or risk blindness.
Instead, Trenge’s dad hand-sewed a set of protective eye goggles to the headgear Trenge wore. Since then, manufacturers have stepped in to produce more uniform sets.
Still, opponents viewed the goggles as a weakness. Like going after an injured leg or shoulder, they attacked his face and eyes deliberately.
It boiled over in a match at Penn State this season when Joel Edwards, who isn’t even the starting Penn State 197-pounder, repeatedly punched Trenge in the goggles.
Infuriated, Trenge retaliated by grabbing Edwards and heaving him over his shoulders off the mat, resulting in a disqualification.
Lehigh immediately sent Trenge to a sports psychologist to work on anger management. Trenge subsequently was disqualified during national duals for defending himself while taking injury time but has had no incidents since.
In fact, Trenge did not retaliate when his second opponent at nationals punched him in the face. That was the first full bout Trenge wrestled without his goggles.
”The reason I took them off was I didn’t want it known in the back of my head 10 years from now that the goggles prevented me from getting the title,” Trenge said. ”But the goggles didn’t prevent me from getting the title, [Northern Iowa’s Sean] Stender [who defeated Trenge in the semifinals] did. “¦ For me, I was shocked.
”This year helped me. I kind of believe in fate. I think everything happens for a reason, and I think part of the reason that happened [with the anger management] and part of the reason I never won a title is it’s to help me be a better person. “¦ I think I learned more from that than I did from the actual wrestling.”
The obstacles Trenge has overcome are far more critical to his future success than the act of winning an NCAA championship. He wants to finish his Master’s in environmental science and be a junior high or high school teacher, and he wants to coach high school wrestling.
As always, he is willing to do the work, put in the effort, to achieve those dreams.
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