THE TRIALS... 1976 from cutting weight all year and ended up 4th. I just didn’t have it. I told myself I wasn’t going to cut that much weight ever again. The next year I wrestled at 126 for Purdue and beat most all the 126-pounders around. I won the Big Tens and was named Outstanding Wrestler. At the 1975 NCAAs I lost to John Fritz in the quarter-finals. I was very disappointed; I really thought I would beat him. I did come back to take 3rd place, beating Jimmy Carr in the consolations. That let me know not to be scared of him later. I was wrestling Freestyle year-round now, placing but not winning the big tournaments. I trained hard for the Trials and thought I was ready for Cleveland. However, I finished 6th. The only good thing was that I beat Fritz, 6-1. Otherwise I didn’t wrestle well at all. I remember being pinned by Northwestern’s Mike Massery. I felt very depressed. I wrestled crappy and went back home licking my wounds. I figured that I wouldn’t even go to the Camp and that I’d wait till the 1980 Games to have a chance to make the Olympics. I was very down on myself and went out and partied and tried to have a good time. However my old coaches and my folks called me, talked to me and convinced me to keep going and to get myself to the Camp in DeKalb. I did and I had a great experience. I felt a lot better and headed for the tournament at Brockport. There I faced Don Behm and Jack Reinwand and beat them both to win the mini-tournament. Massery didn’t show up, so it was down to Jan Gitcho, Jimmy Carr and me. Gitcho had placed 2nd to Carr at Cleveland and was a stud from Southern Illinois. He also had wrestled on the US team at the Worlds in ’74. In our first match he trounced me, 22-4. He just killed me. Everyone figured that I was done. I got together with my coaches and we decided upon a new strategy. I had to tire Gitcho out and beat him with my conditioning. These were nine minute matches, so in our second match, I started to wear him down and I rallied at the end to win 8-5. I could see that I would win the third and deciding match if I could weather his early storm. I did and won the third match handily. I thought, ‘Wow, now I’m in the finals against Carr.’ Weigh-in was the next morning. I’m fine but Carr doesn’t make weight the first go-round. 100 Wrestlers At The Trials
THE TRIALS... 1976
Finally, just before time is up, Carr makes weight. I am glad because I wanted to wrestle him. I knew I could beat him. And in the first match, I did… something like 9-7. It was an exciting, good match with lots of throws. I could see that Carr was dying, though, come the third period. In the second match, it was all over – I pinned him. I caught him and stuck him and I had my ticket to Montreal. Sandy Cageao was a referee at the Brockport Trials and offers his memories of the Carr – Corso competition: Carr did not come to Brockport until the night before his finals match. Corso, meanwhile, had been wrestling his way up the ladder. Carr came in about eight pounds overweight. His brother Fletcher was furious. Jimmy spent much of the night losing the weight and just did make it. I think that took a lot out of him. At one point during their first match, Carr takes Corso down right to his back. From where I am sitting – and where the Mat Chair, Steve Evanoff is sitting – it is a pin. It should have been considered a fall, but the referee didn’t see it. The Mat Chair cannot initiate a score, he can only confirm one, so no pin was called. Anyway Corso ended up winning and I actually think he was the better wrestler to go to Montreal. Wrestling official Rick Tucci recalls the Carr-Corso matches. He refereed the first one and has this to say: Carr was the heavy favorite. The AAU officials wanted him in the US lineup. He was a past Olympian with lots of experience. Jimmy was cocky – the whole Carr family was – and they could back it up. No one gave Corso a shot. I refereed one of their matches. There were lots of scrambles. Towards the very end of the match, Corso was ahead by two points when Jimmy went for a double-leg. He lifted Joe high in the air and took him down to the mat – on his belly. I gave Carr one point for the takedown and the match ended with Corso ahead by a point. The AAU officials called me over to the sidelines. They wanted Jimmy to win and asked me if I couldn’t give Carr more than one point for that move. I said that since Carr didn’t put Corso in danger I could only award one point. They had a
Wisconsin native Russ Hellickson upended 1972 Olympian Henk Schenk on his way to winning the Trials at 220 pounds Photograph by Pete Hausrath, courtesy of Amateur Wrestling News
video replay, although I am not sure it was used. My ruling stood and Corso, nor Carr, got to go to the Olympics. There was another former Big Ten wrestler who, unlike Corso, was pretty much head and shoulders above all the US competitors in his weight class. That would be 220-pounder Russ Hellickson. Russ tells his story: In ’74 I badly hurt my neck while practicing with Ben Peterson. I ruptured two discs and elected not to have surgery. That would have taken me out of action for too long. So I was cautious while wrestling and had to be selective as to how often I could wrestle in tournaments. I qualified for the 1975 US World team. Ben went to the Worlds at 220 and I was at 198. I was having trouble keeping my weight down, so after
the Worlds I asked Ben if we could switch weight classes. He said, ‘Yes’, so I stayed up at 220 after that. By the time the ’76 Trials rolled around, I was still hurting with a lot of pain in my neck and arm. I had trouble sleeping. My toughest competitor was Larry Bielenberg who was good, but nothing like Ben. I beat him in the finals both in Cleveland and Brockport and was very happy to finally make the Olympic team. A few words about Ben Peterson. We wrestled each other many, many times and worked out together many, many times. We made each other better. I saw him as a teammate, not as a rival. He could be brutal to wrestle but he had a lot of class. We shared the same concept that you didn’t have to hate or hurt someone to beat them. Wrestlers At The Trials 101