Lawrence High junior wrestler Gordon Wolf wasn’t discovered in gym class, or while scrapping it out in the backyard with a neighbor or family member.
All he did was go to a Little League baseball game…and not watch it.
“Gordon was the little brother tagging along with his big brother (Ian) to his baseball game,” recalled Marcia Wolf, Gordon’s mother. “While he was at the game he would shimmy up the flagpole by the backstop, and go up like 20, 30 feet. One day a guy came up to me and said, ‘Your kid has tremendous upper body strength, you should put him in wrestling.’”
Gordon was in kindergarten at the time, and his mom didn’t know of any wrestling clubs and couldn’t find any. Finally, Wolf’s mother put him in a local Lawrence operation when Wolf was in the second grade.
“Only six kids had signed up,” Marcia said. “The manager of our little club, Tommy Kelly, said that six isn’t enough, let’s see if another club will adopt us.”
That club became the PAWS program in Princeton, where Wolf remained until eighth grade.
“That’s where Gordon really learned a lot,” Marcia said. “He grew up on the mat, grew up with lots of friends, and got a strong but strict base of being a gentleman on a mat and learning what a good wrestler should be. But it all just kind of happened. We never knew anybody that wrestled.”
Marcia said “it probably would have been baseball,” had Wolf not shimmied up that pole.
As it is, he is rewriting the Lawrence High record book.
Wolf had a remarkable junior season. He went 37-3 with 12 pins, eight technical falls and four major decisions. It added up to Mercer County and District 17 tournament championships at 132 pounds, a second-place finish at Region 5, and a fifth-place climb to the podium at the NJSIAA State Championships in Atlantic City.
The 37 wins were a school record for one season, and the fifth-place finish was second highest in school history, behind Mark Savino’s run to the championship.
“It’s sunk in that I came in fifth in the state,” Wolf said. “But I still don’t know how to describe it.”
It was Wolf’s second trip to Atlantic City. He also got there as a freshman but lost in his first match, and did not get a return trip as a sophomore after losing the consolation final at regionals. But watching other opponents make the trip got him fired up.
“Last year, I was watching everyone who I’d beaten previously, all going to states,” he said. “I was up there, hanging with these kids and seeing them place when I didn’t make it down there. It was bad. I wanted to get back down there and place. I placed this year, but I would say the ultimate goal would be to be the state champ.”
After losing in the regions, Wolf entered the off-season as a binge eater.
“I lost, I was mad at myself and I found the only way to beat my anger, I guess, was by eating,” he said. “I gained 40 pounds (his mom says it was less), and I stopped wrestling for three months because I got bursitis in my knee. But I got back into it in late May and just really started going hard, going to club practice [at Fury Wrestling in Flemington] three or four times a week, lifting every day. I just kept wrestling and wrestling every single day. I really wanted to do well this year.”
Cardinals’ coach Chris Lynne felt the trips to Flemington were a big key to Wolf’s success.
“Gordon’s nightly drilling sessions at Fury wrestling club paid huge dividends,” Lynn said. “As well as all the Lawrence practice time with his drilling partner Mike Jennings, not to mention his proper weight control and diet all season long.”
Fury agrees with Lynne, noting that his Fury coach Kyle Brewer, Jennings and brother Ian have all had a huge impact on his progress.
“It’s good with Jennings, we push each other a lot,” Wolf said. “We still push each other even after the season and we’re still working out. It helps being friends, but I feel it would be a lot better if we had two more kids and it wouldn’t just be my style versus his style. We have very different styles.”
Wolf’s style helped him win his first 32 matches this season before losing to East Brunswick’s Sean Glasgow, 7-6, in the region finals. The setback forced him to wrestle a prelim state bout, which he won 13-4 over Phillipsburg Anthony Johnson. That was followed by a 7-6 tiebreaker win over Howell’s Ben Esposito, the Region 6 champion.
That put Wolf up against South Plainfield senior Scott DelVecchio in the quarterfinals. Wolf suffered a 13-5 loss, but considering DelVecchio won the state title and finished 48-0, it was a just a good experience for the Lawrence High junior.
“When I found out that I would have DelVecchio in the quarters, my goal was to win those first two matches so I could wrestle him,” Wolf said. “I thought I wrestled kind of stupid in that match. I probably would do things differently.”
Wolf didn’t hang his head, however, as he bounced back with a 4-2 win over Hunterdon Central’s Collin Boylan and an 11-4 decision over St. Peter’s Connor Berkert.
“I realized it would be a special season when I beat Boylan,” Wolf said. “That’s when I knew I would place.”
Wolf then fell to Livingston’s Jason Estevez, 6-4, in the third-place consolation semifinals but had earned himself one more match, which produced a 6-0 win over Bordentown’s Justin McTamney in the battle for fifth.
“My freshman year I lost my first match at states and wrestled for a total of six minutes,” Wolf said. “This time around, I wrestled seven full matches, each of them going six minutes and one was a tie-breaker. It was a much better experience.”
Fresh off his strong showing, Wolf has no intentions of taking time off.
“I don’t think I’m gonna take a break,” he said. “I want to keep going, and just maybe take a few days break every once in a while. But you have to keep wrestling if you want to get better.”
Lynne has no doubts that his star will indeed, get better.
“We are looking for even bigger accomplishments next season,” said the coach, adding with a laugh. “No pressure, of course.”
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