The thought of his final trip to the state tournament still causes the face of Brandon Tressler to cringe, whose attempt at claiming an elusive title was again out of reach as a senior. But despite not finishing his prep career the way he would have wanted, he instead got something he needed a little more.
“It obviously didn’t turn out how I wanted it to turn out, but I figured there is a reason for it and I’m lucky I get another chance at it in college,” said Tressler as he looked back on the experience. “That’s pretty much what I’ve been looking forward to since.”
Tressler may not have won a gold medal but he saw his hard work pay off in the form of a wrestling scholarship at King College in Bristol, Tenn., where he’ll consider studying education or criminal justice. “I knew for sure I wanted to wrestle in college. I didn’t know where, but I knew I wanted to,” he said.
Figuring it all out was made a little easier thanks to some advice he got from his older brother, who had just completed his first season of baseball at Stetson University after already going through the process. “I learned to look around a lot more and see what my options were,” said Tressler.
After visiting a few schools he landed the near full-ride scholarship and will have the chance to compete early on in the 184-pound class for an NAIA team that made its way into the Top 25 this past season. Though Tennessee is a long way from Florida, Tressler is looking forward to the new surroundings after having regularly spent time out of state competing at various meets during the summer months.
Though, if the advice from his brother holds up, he’ll have to adjust in a few ways while going about his everyday life. “He says I’ve got to manage my time a lot better than I do now,” said the younger Tressler with a smile. “Instead of going out on the weekends I’ll have to stay in a little bit more and study.”
Helmet to headgear
Wrestling wasn’t even the sport of choice for Tressler entering his sophomore year of high school. It was a trip to the state finals that year, and the ensuing two years that followed, that helped him find his place. “When I first started high school I planned on going to college for football and wrestling was just something I was going to do to stay in shape,” he said. “But then that got all turned around when I started doing good in states.”
He would eventually go on to place runner-up as a sophomore and junior before taking fourth this past season. Through the years he realized that accounting for his own actions in a sport was more to his liking than relying on others to follow suit. “Wrestling was a lot more fun because it was about the more you put in, the more you get out of it,” he said.
It was lessons such as this, learned from coaches at UHS, that prepared him to deal with the self-imposed pressures of returning to the state finals. “They helped me keep my mind straight throughout the season, especially when the pressure got really bad. It helped to talk with them about that stuff,” Tressler said. And it reinforced in his own mind what he was ultimately competing for in the eyes of head coach Randy Jessee.
“You develop the pressure yourself,” said Jessee of that mind-set. “He’s been there. He’s been wrestling his whole life since he was 8 years old. I think there was more pressure for him to do good so he could go on to the next step (to college) than onto a state championship.” Jessee feels that with the way Tressler was brought up by his family, and the natural ability he possesses as a wrestler, that his best days of growing as a person are yet to come.
“There’s a lot of things he has that you can’t coach,” Jessee said. “You can’t coach that ‘desire’ and that ‘want’ that he has. The bottom line is he’ll get a good education, that’s more important than anything, and this is a good way to do it.” This summer Tressler plans to train harder and get stronger before going off to school.
He knows that, despite carrying a bit of a chip on his shoulder after having not climbed to the top of the podium following his last tournament, that the competition he’s up against will likely be just as good, and even better, than he faced in high school. And that means in the classroom, too.
“I’m going to have to take school and sports a lot more seriously now at the college level because it’s going to be a little different,” he said. Hopefully, for him, in more ways than one in the end.
Wrestlingfan
