THE TRIALS... 1972 through the jaw, disabling him and keeping him from the Camp. So, I started out on top of the ladder instead of #2. Seay defeated Holzer and then Frey beat Seay, which set up a final showdown between me and Frey. Since I had defeated him at Anoka, I only had to beat Frey one time. He had to beat me twice. Now Frey was a good defensive wrestler. He’d catch you on your mistake and could block my arm-spin well. In our first match, he beat me by one point. Wayne Baughman watched the match and told me afterwards, ‘That was the worst officiating I ever saw. You won’t lose this next one.’ Well, that was good encouragement for me. There actually were a lot of my throws that never did get scored. Anyway, Phil pulled his groin muscle in our second match and defaulted to me. I made the Greco Olympic team in my last chance! John Peterson gives an account of his Camp memories: At the Camp, others had to wrestle-off to get to me. In the final round I faced Geoff Baum from Oklahoma State. He was my brother Ben’s #1 rival in college. I beat him twice by a couple of points to make the Olympic team. Those were the only two times I ever wrestled him. After the last match, Baum went up to my folks and told them, ‘I wish you never had any kids.’ The Camp itself was very hot – sweat dripping off you all the time. We worked out in the Williams Arena which was right across from the football stadium. Coach Farrell had us run those stadium steps and tortured us with the Real Runner machine. He was a great motivator. Once a week he’d get the ten Freestyle team members together and tell us very sincerely that we were the best Freestyle team that the US ever had. After the Olympics, he confided to Ben and me that he actually had some doubts about us two, but he never let us know that the whole time leading up to the Games. I remember Rick Sanders as a very hard worker. He trained harder than most of us. He taught me all types of single-leg counters. His lifestyle wasn’t the best but he did have a more serious side. We had some good talks about the Bible and he had some genuine interest in that area. My brother wasn’t real happy with him, 80 Wrestlers At The Trials
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though, especially the loud boom-box that he carried around. Ben would go over and turn it down, or off; minutes later, Rick, with this little smirk of a smile on his face, would turn it right back up again. Heavyweight Greg Wojciechowski talks about missing his opportunity to be an Olympian in ’72: I believe I got screwed out of a chance to be the heavyweight on the ’72 Greco team. Up until that year, a wrestler could only make our Olympic team in one style, even though you could tryout for both. Well, they changed the rule for Chris Taylor. He beat me pretty decisively in Freestyle, but it was close between us in the Greco finals. We tied twice and then he beat me by a point or two. I had defeated him on other occasions even though he had over a 200-pound weight advantage on me. However, Alan Rice loved Taylor and he pushed the Committee to make an exception. They took Chris in both styles and left me home. They haven’t allowed anyone else compete in both Freestyle and Greco since then. The Final Wrestle-offs 114.5 pounds Freestyle – Jimmy Carr vs John Morley
I
f you were a lightweight champion-caliber wrestler, chances are you came from ‘back east’ during the decades of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. So it was in 1972 in the 114.5 pound Freestyle division. The two best were from Pennsylvania and New York – one a young phenom, just a junior in high school; the other an NAIA college graduate who gained notoriety in the wrestling world by winning three National AAU titles while competing for the NYAC. Jimmy Carr recalls: I started wrestling in Tom Canavan’s garage in Erie, Pennsylvania. I came from a wrestling family. I liked to go watch my older brother Fletcher wrestle. He was seven years older than me. He passed down a few pointers. After a year or two he told our mom it was time for me to stop watching and to get out on the mat and wrestle. Canavan got me to work out on his mat in
Jimmy Carr, the phenom from Erie, survived a serious knee injury suffered while working out with Rick Sanders, and won the Trials as a 17-year-old Photograph courtesy of Wade Schalles
his garage. There were some tough young kids in the area at my weight class. Tom Turnbull was a good one. I started going to youth tournaments and always placed 2nd or 3rd behind wrestlers on my own team. I knew I could beat these guys, but hadn’t put my mind to it yet – I was just 10-11 years old. Canavan stuck with me and as I increased my intensity I started winning. I began to wrestle year-round, going to Freestyle tournaments in the summer. I started beating the people I had previously lost to, and winning some open tournaments against guys much older. In 1970 I went to the Junior Nationals out in Iowa and won them, beating another black kid in the finals. In 1971 they were holding tryouts for the Pan-American games. Canavan and I drove out to Oklahoma for the tryouts. I tried to go down to 105.5 but couldn’t make it. Wrestling at 114.5, Randy Miller beat me. I didn’t do well at all. I told Canavan, ‘If you had let me wrestle 114.5 to start with I could have beaten all those guys.’ Later that year, I went to Annapolis trying to make the US World team. I figured to
go at 114.5. Once there I told Canavan, ‘Heck with trying to make weight, let’s just make this a vacation.’ He said, ‘No way, son.’ I realized then that I couldn’t let him down, so I went ahead and gave it my best shot. I made weight. I was seeded something like 9th, but I won all my matches against these older guys. I wrestled Randy Miller again and wiped him off the mat. I made the team and wrestled for the US in the 1971 FILA World Championships at Sofia, Bulgaria at the age of 16. I knew then that I had a good shot at making the US Olympic team the following year. My training intensified. My workout schedule included lots of running – sometimes ten miles a day. My best workout partner was my brother Joe. He was a 163-pounder and we’d go at it hard. We’d especially work on takedowns and bounce each other off the walls, never stopping until one or the other of us got the takedown. Canavan brought in Rick Sanders a couple of times to work out with me – still in Canavan’s garage. Rick gave me many valuable pointers and I considered him a good friend. He also gave me a bad injury. It was in March of ’72 and I was working Wrestlers At The Trials 81