ST. CROIX, Minn. – A little boy from Stillwater is inspiring hundreds of wrestlers in his community. The boy with special needs hasn’t let his disability slow him down or keep him from wrestling the best.
Dillon Hill, a 9-year-old with Down syndrome, started wrestling at St. Croix Valley Athletic Association a year ago.
Hill started working with the Coach Chris Bahl’s to learn the ins and outs of the sport.
“Leroy, touch your toes.”
Leroy reaches his arms out in front of him in mock effort, and says, “They’re at home.”
And then, the boys laugh.
He didn’t know they were gone.
Staring down at the sheets of his bed, the morphine starting to fade, Leroy Sutton was still numb, but he had a feeling something was wrong.
“It was when I tried to sit up,” Leroy said, remembering that day nearly eight years ago. “I pulled the covers up, and that’s when I figured everything out.”
It was Dec. 7, 2001, the day that shaped Leroy’s body, and his life.
He was 11 years old at the time, walking to school with his brother along the Wheeling and Lake Erie railroad tracks near his home in East Akron, Ohio. A freight train approached, and Leroy got too close. His backpack got caught on one of the passing cars, and he was pulled beneath the wheels.
“I didn’t even look down,” said Leroy, now 19, recalling the first moments afterward. “I was just staring at the sun the whole time. I wasn’t trying to look down because that’s when I would have panicked.”
ENZO Films is embarking on the making of an Independent Film that promotes and supports our beloved sport of wrestling.
The film, which was inspired by actual events, is entitled CARTER-145. It is a Midwestern, sports drama that focuses on a high school wrestler who has just arrived to a small town obsessed with its wrestling team and the legendary coach that leads them. The wrestling program primed for its fourth state title in a row, begins to spiral out of control, when some devastating truths are uncovered about the coach’s winning ways.
Bob Hoskins will play the role of the coach.
Bob Hoskins’ first appearance to mainstream American audiences was in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, for which he received a second Golden Globe nomination. Some of Hoskins’ other notable appearances include playing opposite Cher in Mermaids (1990), the foreign film Mona Lisa which won him an Oscar nomination as well as a Cannes Film Festival and Golden Globe Awards), boatswain Smee to Captain Hook in Hook (1991), and Uncle Bart, the violent “owner” of Jet Li in Unleashed.
The filmmaker, Joshua J. Smith, was a former coach and wrestler in the Midwest.
Mike Rodriguez was one of the great college wrestlers of the 1950s — a three-time Big Ten champ and two-time NCAA finalist for the University of Michigan…
Then he became a long-time high school coach in Detroit, molding Michigan high school state champions.
Now there’s a neat video tribute to Mike Rodriguez as wrestler and coach, including black-and-white footage of some of his most thrilling college matches on YouTube.
Michael Spriggs grabbed on to a teammate’s shoulder and headed for the gymnasium wall, where William Ngakoue, a 215-pound junior on the C.H. Flowers High School wrestling team, rested after winning his first match. Leaning in closely, Spriggs peppered Ngakoue with questions about whether the advice he had given him before the match had helped.
“I wanted to know what he was thinking out there, what kind of moves he was using,” said Spriggs, a 189-pound senior. “I’m glad he used the techniques I taught him.”
Ngakoue carefully chose his words to describe the match to Spriggs, including the reversal that led to the eventual pin. He had to be very specific, because Spriggs couldn’t see the match.
Spriggs, who is nearing the end of his final season as a high school wrestler, has been blind for more than five years. For two of those years, he also has been one of the most valuable members of the Flowers team.
“He shows me how to do things instead of telling me,” Ngakoue said. “He knows what he’s talking about.”
Like the lead character in a drama, Henry Priest declares, “Wrestling saved my life.”
The camera then pans a series of scenes: the premiere at the May 2007 Cannes Film Festival of a Priest-produced film, “American Identity,” a story of two soldiers affected by Sept. 11; the 37-year-old Californian developing sports-related films as executive producer of productions for the National High School Coaches Association; audiences intent on Priest’s inspiring tale at leadership and motivational workshops.
Turn your attention now to the flashback.
Along with an older sister and two younger brothers, Priest was born and reared in East Los Angeles, an area, he says, “pretty much known to have a large population of gang members.” In fact, for three generations, his family members and friends had succumbed to the pressure to join local gangs.
Though Priest resisted, he recalls, “I had all this negative energy piled up. I was this angry kid.”
Then during Priest’s junior year at Schurr High School in Montebello, the wrestling coach sought him out. “I was recruited because I was this tiny, tough kid,” Priest says. “I competed at 98 pounds my senior year.”
[Bethlehem, Pennsylvania] The highly anticipated wrestling movie “VERITAS” will screen during the South Side Film Festival at the Lehigh University Campus in the Packard Lab Auditorium on Thursday, June 21st, at 7pm and on Saturday, June 23rd at 2pm. (200 W. Packer Ave. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania)
VERITAS means Righteousness, Truth and Integrity… For three time NCAA All American Wrestler, Jon Trenge, it’s a reminder for him to do the right thing. Veritas is a feature-length film documenting Lehigh University’s 2004-2005 wrestling team and the story of Jon Trenge, who strives to achieve his childhood dream of becoming a National Wrestling Champion for his hometown school. Jon’s freshman season is cut short when doctors discover an eye condition so serious that he is told he should never wrestle again or risk losing his eyesight permanently. Jon refuses to accept his doctor’s warning and is determined to find a way to wrestle. After undergoing five eye surgeries, he wears homemade protective goggles designed by his father and nearly achieves his goal his sophomore and junior seasons losing in the National Finals.
