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March-April 2007
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Sports |
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Photograph by Stu Rosner |
Bode Ogunwole |
Though he had never wrestled Conrad, Ogunwole had a realistic chance of dethroning him and winning the national championship this March at the NCAA tournament. Ogunwole started his final campaign with an 11-0 mark, including two tournament victories, at the All Star Classic in Dallas and the Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational. But late in January, in a scramble during a match at Lehigh, he suffered a torn triceps tendon. The only option was surgery, with a six-month recovery period—a sad end to his college wrestling career.
Ogunwole was not an obvious candidate to contend for a national wrestling title. As a youth, he did a lot of acting, and played piano; in fact, he still plays piano, mostly classical. He’s a soft-spoken, bespectacled biochemistry concentrator, a pre-med interested in research. His parents, John and Stella, are native-born Nigerians who came to college in the United States, and aren’t especially athletic. But at Georgetown Preparatory School in North Bethesda, Maryland, Ogunwole tried football and performed rather well as a nose guard on the defensive line. A wrestling coach asked if he’d like to try out. “I went out for the team and enjoyed it,” he says, “and I’ve never stopped competing. I like the fact that the pressure is on you individually to win matches to help your team out.”
Typically, that pressure would fall on Ogunwole’s shoulders because, in dual meets, heavyweight events are wrestled last, so their result can decide the match. There are 10 weight classes in college wrestling, beginning at 125 pounds, and the rules ensure that, among the lighter athletes, opponents differ in weight by no more than eight pounds. The classes widen slightly for heavier grapplers, rising to a 13-pound span for the 197-pound class, which falls between the 184-pounders and heavyweights. But no class admits as wide a range as the heavyweight, whose 87-pound bandwidth ranges from 198 to 285 pounds. (It is not “unlimited,” though, and some heavyweights must lose weight to compete; no sumo wrestlers need apply.) “At the heavyweight level, there are so many variations of body types,” explains head wrestling coach Jay Weiss. “There are really big guys who are slow, and smaller heavyweights, around 220, who win with agility. But Bode is enormously strong, and also so athletic: he’s got an unusual combination of speed, agility, and quickness to go with his size.”
At 5 feet, 11 inches and 260 pounds, Ogunwole does not impress one as an enormous man, but he does project a formidably solid presence and it is easy to imagine that he would be a tough guy to topple. He is big enough, however, that the Crimson wrestling room has sometimes run out of men for him to practice against; football linemen Frank Fernandez III ’07 and Matt Drazba ’08, both of whom wrestled in high school, have at times volunteered as sparring partners. (This year, freshman heavyweight Andrew Knapp provided an option.)
Ogunwole won his matches mostly by points, not pins. “In high school, heavyweights seem to have the most pins, but that’s not true in college,” he explains. “I’m not a big pinner.” Only five of his 24 victories last year came via falls. “I’m better on my feet,” he continues, “and can get a good amount of takedowns” (see box). “It’s very hard to score on Bode,” says Weiss. “He has not been taken down many times in his entire career.”
In his last two years at Georgetown Prep, Ogunwole went undefeated, twice winning the National Prep Wrestling Tournament. At Harvard, he made his mark immediately: he was Ivy League Rookie of the Year in 2004 as well as Freshman of the Year at the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association (EIWA) championships, where he placed third. He qualified for the NCAA tournament, where he went all the way to the quarterfinals. As a sophomore, he posted a 25-7 record, came in fifth at the EIWA, and again qualified for the NCAA tournament, making it to the round of 16.
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