Finding the Right Fit at Castleton When Max Tempel graduated high school, he wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to do. He had been recruited by Spartan head coach Scott Legacy to join the first-year wrestling program for the 2016-17 season, but Tempel felt unsure about his future as a wrestler after a grueling high school career and decided to stick close to his home town of Averill Park, New York. His college days started at Siena College, but he quickly realized that it wasn’t a good fit for him, so he transferred to Hudson Valley Community College to finish out his freshman year. “Sometimes it’s tough to really know what you want at 18 years old,” Tempel said. “I didn’t really know what I wanted to do or where I wanted to be, so I ended up going to Siena for a semester because it was close to home. I got about halfway through the fall semester and looked at myself in the mirror and really felt like I wasn’t in the right place.” At that point in time, Tempel had the itch to continue his wrestling career in college and began to train once more for the sport he loved so much. Word got around to Coach Legacy, and the Spartan head coach reached out to Tempel to let him know that there was still a spot on the roster for him if he was interested. That gesture meant a lot to Tempel, proving the character of Coach Legacy and the program he was working to build. “I really liked Coach Legacy and the coaching staff at Castleton out of high school, but I just decided at that time to not continue with wrestling and I think I regretted that a little bit,” Tempel added. “For me it meant a lot when Coach Legacy reached back out because he didn’t forget about me, and I knew that they did a lot of really 26 CASTLETON UNIVERSITY
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