This messy, cluttered, typically teenage bedroom belongs to Jake Deitchler, an atypical 18-year-old Olympian. While most of his fellow graduates of Anoka High School in Anoka, Minn., will spend the summer bumming off their parents, Deitchler is training for Beijing.
He finished high school in early April and took part in his graduation ceremony last month. Three weeks later, he qualified for the Olympics, becoming the fifth Greco-Roman Olympic wrestler from Anoka High and the youngest United States Olympic wrestler since Mike Farina in 1976.
“My life changed like this,” Deitchler said, shaking his head and snapping his fingers. “In an instant.”
Deitchler was talking during his first trip to Manhattan, during his first visit to a pub, as part of a USA Wrestling promotional tour late last month.
There, at a corner table underneath neon Bud Light signage, Deitchler tried to pinpoint where this crazy journey began. Best he can figure, it started in Brandon Paulson’s driveway.
Paulson won a Greco-Roman silver medal at the 1996 Olympics. He retired in 2004 after an epic triple-overtime loss at the Olympic trials, a defeat so painful he thought about it every day for years.
The match is still saved on his TiVo. The ending never changes: Paulson, resting on his knees, drenched in sweat, hands covering the agony written on his face.
“This is a wrestler’s classic, one for the ages,” the announcer says. “This will be tough on Brandon Paulson.”
After the loss, Paulson told reporters everything happened for a reason. When he returned to Minnesota, he found the Anoka High wrestling coach, Todd Springer, waiting in his driveway. He wanted to discuss a ninth grader named Jake Deitchler.
Soon, Paulson and Deitchler began working out. Paulson gave Deitchler his telephone number and told him to call anytime. Big mistake.
Deitchler called the next day, and the day after that, and most days for weeks and months and years. One Sunday, the workout stalker called six times.
“It was just one of those matches,” said Jason Deitchler, Jake’s father. “You can’t explain it. It was divine.”
Paulson and Deitchler are cut from the same competitive cloth. They compete in everything — foosball, wrestling, sauna sit-offs. During one practice session, the teacher tore his anterior cruciate ligament wrestling the student.
The more Paulson pushed, the more Deitchler responded. He stayed after practice every day, arrived at school before sunrise and left after sunset, won three state championships and more matches — 201, including the last 111 straight — than anyone in school history.
Only Deitchler did not make small gains. He made exponential leaps. He learned moves one day and used them in matches the next. Even before the Olympic trials.
“I thought of something on Monday,” Paulson said. “I showed him on Tuesday, and he beat the best guy in the world at his weight class with it later that week. That’s not normal. That’s not even coaching.”
Asked for a comparison, the talkative Paulson suddenly was silent. Told the progress sounds more typical of a prodigal violinist, he nodded.
“There’s nobody to compare him to in wrestling,” Paulson said. “He progressed faster than anybody I’ve ever seen.”
That statement means something in Anoka, a suburb north of Minneapolis that locals call the Halloween Capital of the World. Deitchler also wrestles for the Minnesota Storm, coached by Dan Chandler, a three-time Olympian and Anoka High graduate. The school has sent at least one Greco-Roman wrestler to every Olympics since 1968.
Deitchler did not end up at Anoka High by accident. Jason Deitchler had known his son would follow in the family wrestling tradition since the first weekend of his life, when Jake was born and Jason left for a college wrestling tournament the next day.
Dad became an all-American at Mayville State in North Dakota, and because Jake was born during his freshman year, teammates became extended family, a wrestling team that raised a wrestler.
Jason Deitchler moved the family to Minnesota. Eventually, he moved again, to Anoka, even though the house there cost an extra $70,000.
Jason fed Jake books, mostly self-help, biography and inspirational.
He built his son a wrestling room in the basement of their three-story home, complete with a mat, a dummy and the sauna he installed for Jake on his 16th birthday. They talked wrestling every morning, every meal, every night.
Despite the wrestle-mania upbringing, Deitchler waited until age 12 before adding the Olympics to his goals. Overhearing that, Paulson rolled his eyes and noted that was only six years ago.
Paulson always had an infatuation with the Olympics, religiously watching the winter and summer games. At Deitchler’s graduation party, it was Paulson who gave him the Olympic flag. During the two weeks before the trials, Deitchler found himself drawn to his bedroom, where he sat on the bed and stared obsessively at the flag.
In the Olympic trials in Las Vegas, Deitchler lost the first period of every match during qualifying. He beat the celebrated Harry Lester, a two-time world bronze medalist and a medal favorite in Beijing, in the 145.5-pound division with a move Paulson taught him earlier that week. He celebrated like any 18-year-old would — dinner at the Hard Rock, a 32-ounce Mountain Dew and this gem: “I’m off to the arcade now,” he quipped to reporters.
Folks in wrestling described the upset as one of the sport’s greatest.
People told Paulson the last match they saw that was that exciting was his triple-overtime loss in 2004. This time, the memory hurt a little less.
He thought back to his quotation. Everything happens for a reason.
“It was the ultimate thrill of victory, following the ultimate agony of defeat,” Paulson said. “That’s what I went through the last four years.”
After missing his prom and finishing classes two months early, Deitchler wants to retain some semblance of a normal life. He plans on wrestling next season at Minnesota, again following in Paulson’s footsteps. His goals are taped to the wall leading to the basement.
He taps them as he walks downstairs. National champion. Tap. World champion. Tap. Olympic champion. Tap.
Until then, he must confront the whirlwind. One day, Deitchler is at his graduation party with 200 friends, picture montages and medals lining the garage, family telling him to do his laundry before leaving for Las Vegas. The next, he is toppling wrestlers he once idolized. Then Manhattan, where he asked his mother, Racheal, if he could get a tattoo of the Olympic rings.
“Absolutely not, Jacob,” came the stern reply.
Kids these days.
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