BY BILL MCLEAN
\nSTAFF WRITER
\nMind over matmen was Jamie Smith’s greatest strength as a wrestler at Wheeling High School.<\/p>\n
“He never thought he’d lose, “Wildcats wrestling coach Neal Weiner said of the 2005 graduate. “Even when he was a freshman, going up against state qualifiers, losing never entered his mind.”<\/p>\n
Wheeling’s winningest wrestler in school history — 153-30 (.836), including 92 pins — signed a letter of intent last week to wrestle at Northwestern University. The 135-pound Smith was runner-up at State last winter, one year after finishing sixth at State in the same weight class.<\/p>\n
“Jamie didn’t just have a great attitude for wrestling in his years here, “Weiner added, “he had a great body for it, too: lanky, with long, strong legs. He was hard to stop when he took his shots, because he’d come at you like a spider.”<\/p>\n
Smith was named MSL East wrestler of the year last winter after helping Wheeling capture its fourth straight division title. He was a member of three Class AA regional championship squads and missed 12 bouts his sophomore year because of a broken arm.<\/p>\n
“He’s a true winner, someone I’d want next to me in a foxhole, “Weiner said. “And he comes from such a supportive family; his parents (Mark and Vivian) are such good people. I can’t say enough about them.”<\/p>\n
Northwestern finished 14th at the NCAA Championships last winter. Head coach Tim Cysewski is one of Weiner’s good friends.<\/p>\n
“Northwestern is my adopted school, because my alma mater (Illinois State University) dropped its wrestling program, “Weiner said. “Jamie’s going to be a part of a great program, a first-class operation. I couldn’t be happier for him.”<\/p>\n
Smith, a National Honors Society member, also played varsity football his junior and senior years, earning a coaches award. He was named Wheeling’s athlete of the year in May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BY BILL MCLEAN STAFF WRITER Mind over matmen was Jamie Smith’s greatest strength as a wrestler at Wheeling High School. “He never thought he’d lose, “Wildcats wrestling coach Neal Weiner said of the 2005 graduate. “Even when he was a freshman, going up against state qualifiers, losing never entered his mind.” Wheeling’s winningest wrestler in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrestling"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2B7Di-oG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}