Hamilton West wrestler Luke Bruch hit a wall two years ago. This season, he is back and running through walls with renewed enthusiasm.
By the end of his sophomore season, Bruch wanted to get off the scale and into the refrigerator. Wrestling was no longer fun; just a reminder of how many meals he had to miss.
After finishing second in the districts as a freshman, Bruch lost his district quarterfinal last year and was far from upset about it.
“I was sick of it,” he said. “I just wanted it to end. I wanted to eat. I was starving.”
When his junior year came around, Bruch’s attitude hadn’t changed, and he opted not to wrestle.
“That kind of blind-sided me when he didn’t come out,” coach Gerard Belviso said. “He had a pretty good freshman year and we thought, ‘All right, we’ve got something here.’”
But last year, when Belviso went from assistant to head man, that something temporarily turned to nothing.
“You hear rumblings about different things,” Belviso said. “I spoke with him and the grind of wrestling got to him. He fell out of love with the sport. It was tough. It was my first year taking over and I was like, ‘Aww man.’ He was a tremendous leader, even as a freshman and sophomore.”
Fortunately for the Hornets, the rumblings changed course this year.
“At the beginning of this season I heard rumblings that Luke is coming back,” Belviso said. “I didn’t really know what to expect. Taking a year off of wrestling, you don’t know how it will affect a guy.
“I was super excited to see what the future held but there were some unknowns. Before his first competition, with a week of practice, it was like’ All right, we’re picking up with a head of steam.’ It looked like he was rejuvenated. He had a renewed sense of motivation.”
His return didn’t start well, however. Prior to the season-opening Blue Devil Classic at Ewing, Bruch had a wrestle-off with 2024 region qualifier Dan Figueroa to see who would wrestle at 165 for West.
“I got pinned by Figs, I was humiliated,” he said. “I sat there for 20 minutes, I thought, ‘I guess this was it, this is a wake-up call.’ It’s been my mentality since then that I’m gonna win.”
He wasted little time proving that mindset. As luck would have it, Hamilton was able to place two wrestlers in the 165-pound weight class at Ewing and they met in the finals with Bruch taking a 13-8 decision over his talented teammate.
And the comeback was well underway.
Bruch won his first 13 matches of the season — including the Rumble In the Pines Tournament championship — and as of Jan. 20, a week prior to the Colonial Valley Conference Tournament, he was 17-2 (counting two forfeit wins) with 11 pins, one technical fall and one major decision.
“He came out and was super focused,” Belviso said. “He’s one of the more competitive athletes I’ve been around coaching, but at the same time he’s super even-keeled. He’s one of the hardest workers in the room. He’s vocal when he needs to be, but he just leads by example really well.”
In assessing Bruch’s technique, both the wrestler and his coach feel he is aggressive when necessary, but also calculating.
“He starts off a little elusive,” Belviso said. “He’s light on his feet, he’s good in neutral, he feels things out. I try to work with him on being the aggressor out of the gate. His defense is good, he shoots, his scoring success rate is very high.
“He takes each match a little differently. He’s gone down in a couple matches against some pretty good wrestlers, but he takes off once he gets his offense going. I would say he’s a tactical wrestler. He’s smart. He doesn’t flail just to flail. He sets up well. He’s a long, strong kid, so he looks like he might be in tough positions and he can wrap with his long strong arms, which is nice.”
Bruch’s self-analysis is that “I’m aggressive, but there’s different levels of aggression. I try to bring it out there. My mentality is never give up. Especially when I’m on bottom. I always have the mentality ‘You’ve got to get up.’ If you can outpace the other person and have that mentality of never giving up, you’re going to win. Obviously there’s better wrestlers but if you want it you can get it. It’s a mentality.”
Bruch’s career began by “messing around” with his cousin Hunter Wadsworth, who wrestled for Steinert. He mostly played football but wrestled for Hamilton PAL from fifth to seventh grade until Covid hit. He picked it back up as a freshman at West, and also played football that year.
“It was a decent freshman year,” Bruch said. “It was definitely a reality check coming from PAL. I wasn’t bad. I knew I wanted to wrestle my sophomore year. The seniors my freshman year definitely helped. My friend Figs (Andy Figueroa) motivated me to do everything.”
Entering his sophomore year Bruch bumped from 120 to 126 and went 15-8 with an early loss in the districts.
Suddenly, the sport was becoming an albatross.
“I had to cut a lot of weight, I was walking around at 137 in the beginning of the season and had to cut down to 126,” Bruch recalled. “I wrestled a match at 126 and it was horrible. I just kind of broke down basically, my body.
“I went to wrestle at 132. I wasn’t cutting much weight. I got to counties and I just kind of shut down at counties and I was miserable. I was horrible at making weight, I had no energy and basically fell out of love with the sport.”
Taking the summer and fall off did not help. “When last year came around, there was no desire to cut weight at all,” Bruch said. “I started having to lose weight in October. And I was like ‘There’s no way I can do this for three months. I’m going to be miserable.’”
He gave Belviso the bad news and didn’t attend one match last season.
“I stayed away from the sport,” Bruch said. “I followed everything on Instagram. It just felt wrong to show up to a match. I just wanted to get a lot of it out of my head.”
No one was sure if they had seen the last of Bruch on a mat. Even he wasn’t certain.
“During the football season we weren’t having a very successful year and everybody was talking about ‘Oh I’m excited to wrestle,’” Bruch said. “They were asking me if I was coming out again, I didn’t know. So I was like ‘You know what, I’m gonna come out and see what happens.’”
Bruch feels rejuvenated after being away for a year. A strong lifting regimen allowed him to move up to 165 and he is not scrambling to lose weight anymore. He also began to research nutrition and has stuck with whole foods.
“I just feel amazing,” he said. “I’ve seen a difference. I haven’t been cutting any weight. Coming into this year I was just like ‘I’ve taken a year off and now I have something to prove.”
Bruch, who is hoping for a career in law enforcement, is proving it every time he takes the mat.
“His attitude is one that you love,” Belviso said. “I’m not worried about his preparation or what happens after the match. His two losses were to really good guys and I know they grinded him up, but he was just like, ‘back to work.’ He’s not too low, not too high.
“It’s easy for your emotions to take over. But at the same time, his competitiveness is tremendous. He’s super strong. It really has been impressive to take a year off and do what he’s doing. Maybe it was the best thing for him.”
Through the season’s first six weeks, it sure seemed that way.
Senior Luke Bruch is back in the picture for Hamilton wrestling this year after taking his junior season off. (Photo by Rich Fisher.),
