Excerpt from an article appearing in SI on Campus…
How Does It Feel?
“How does it feel? “How many times have you heard a postgame interviewer ask the question? You just got spanked by the Trojans in the Orange Bowl. How does it feel? You air-balled the potential game-tying free throw. How does it feel? Coach Knight wants to see you in his office. Alone. How does it feel? The responses always blow, but it’s not the athletes’ fault. They’ve often just experienced the peak, or nadir, of their athletic careers. How eloquent would you be if Jill Arrington were waiting with a microphone outside your physics final? SIOC sought enlightenment into moments both big and small. And our respondents had the luxury of time, and reflection, before answering that most-asked of sports questions and providing us with the feel-good (as well as -bad, -happy and even -abandoned) story of the year…..
….TO SUFFER THE AGONY OF MAKING WEIGHT?
Cory Cooperman
LEHIGH ’06, WRESTLING
Cory Cooperman is four pounds over, with 24 hours to sweat it off. The Lehigh wrestler is pulling a hooded sweatshirt over two other sweatshirts and securing the hood over a knit beanie. He’s jogging in small circles, biking, shadowboxing, stumbling around with imaginary opponents. His pores are glistening. The more you sweat, the less you weigh, and Cooperman has to get down to 141 pounds. “By the time you get to weigh-in, you’re drained, you’re light-headed, your body is like Jell-O, “he says. “And then you have to compete an hour later. “Cooperman’s face is red, and he looks like a Siberian refugee buried in all his layers. “My girlfriend gets tears in her eyes when she skips a meal, “he continues. “She says, ‘But I’m hungry; I haven’t had lunch,’ and I sit there and say, ‘Yeah, imagine what we feel like.’ We want to put holes in the wall.”
The thermostat in this Lehigh gym is set to an NCAA maximum of 80,°. The actual temperature ranges from 86,° to 90,°, depending on how many bodies are jumping rope, sparring or drilling each other into the gym floor, which is covered by a wrestling mat sticky from excess sweat. It’s the evening before the Mountain Hawks’ Jan. 14 match against Cornell, and the team is prepping for its fourth weigh-in in eight days. Team members are pressing into each other relentlessly, grimacing with every takedown. They’ve been starving all day. All week. All season. Their bodies are sinewy but worn. A weight management handout written by the coach instructs, “Don’t eat because it tastes good. Don’t be a victim of your desires. “And should they desire a chicken wing, a slice of pepperoni or even a large glass of water, well, they’d be out of luck, because this is wrestling — the only sport in which good coaches spend half their time with their team supervising nutrition. If they don’t, the consequences can be deadly: In 1997 wrestlers from Campbell, Wisconsin-LaCrosse and Michigan died within a six-week period trying to make weight, the first deaths in wrestling since 1928. As a result the NCAA banned the use of saunas, rubber suits and artificial dehydrators such as diuretics and laxatives and moved weigh-ins to one hour before dual meets from 24 hours before.
“You have a match before you have a match: You have a match with the scale, “says Troy Letters, the nation’s top-ranked wrestler at 165 pounds. “You have to win the weight battle before you even get out on the mat.”
After practice Letters and Cooperman drive to a convenience store and carefully select “dinner “– each gets a sesame bagel with a dollop of cream cheese. At home they sit down at the kitchen table and pull out a canister full of a seltzer concoction that the two meticulously measure into eight-ounce tumblers.
“Coop’s been in three weight classes since he transferred [from Minnesota], “Letters says. “He’s pretty good with nutrition even though he can’t make weight. “In 2003, after winning the Eastern Intercollegiate title in the 133-pound class, Cooperman gained 22 pounds in the 12 days before his next competition, the NCAAs. On the day of the meet he was still three over. “I wasn’t sitting there eating friggin’ pizzas. I was just drinking water, “he says. “It was the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me. I had to watch from the stands, and I sat there thinking, I’m better than that kid. “His voice elevates. “Not making weight is like your tailback being busted for drugs the day before a big game.”
The bagels go half-eaten, but the tumblers are drained. Cooperman pours another glass of bubbly and offers it to Letters, who backs away from the liquid as if it’s gasoline. Cooperman looks at the glass and spits in it, then pours it down the drain. “Someday I would like to watch the football game with a bunch of beers and some honey barbecue wings from KFC, “Cooperman says. “Instead we’ll be watching the game with some water. Last year for the Super Bowl I made a veggie platter, and we were all sitting there thinking, Sweet — carrots.”
Finding activities to mask the stomach pain and distract from the dizziness and mental fatigue is half the battle in making weight. “We go to bed as early as we can before competitions so we can kill those hours by sleeping through them, “Letters says. An avid fly-fisherman, Letters spends hours making lures; Cooperman spends hours watching Letters make lures. “We fantasize about things, and that’s how we get through it, “Letters says. “Like, when we’re in the off-season, we enjoy a beer like no one else would enjoy a beer.”
“In high school I used to take diuretics and laxatives, and my body took a licking, “Cooperman says. “I didn’t know what I was doing. Some people still take the easy way out. I’m not religious, but I pray and I know that because of what we do, God’s going to be good to us when it comes to nationals. I know that because we’re doing it the right way; we’re not taking any shortcuts.”
It is 10 p.m. The two excuse themselves to get ready for bed. When they wake up and step on a scale, they discover, to their great joy, that they now have mere ounces to overcome. Both jog and drill in the early morning, then head to the gym. They peel off their layers to near nudity and easily make weight. The reward? Another bagel, a piece of fruit and a glass of water, and seven minutes on the mat with an equally ravenous opponent. “I’ve seen people after they make weight. They gorge, and it hits them while they’re wrestling and they throw up, “Letters says. “Their bodies can’t handle it. “As Letters prepares for his match, he’s asked how anyone could go into battle starved and mentally drained. He shrugs and says, “A hungry dog fights harder. “– Jaime Lowe
Issue date: March 3, 2005
Wrestling Gear
