Press & Sun-Bulletin
ITHACA — Practice is just starting.
The 30 members of the Cornell University wrestling team are paired off in the sweltering Friedman Wrestling Center.
In a corner of the room, Troy Nickerson runs through drills.
He's clearly skilled and strong, even to the untrained eye. But unless you're looking for him, he doesn't stand out. He's one of 30 guys in the room.
Few in this room, though, have accomplished as much as Nickerson. And few have established goals as high as he has.
He's the first wrestler to win five New York State Public High School Athletic Association championships. He and his coach are already looking for him to win not just NCAA championships but also Olympic medals.
"I've had some really good kids come in here," Cornell coach Rob Koll said. "There's only one Troy Nickerson."
Koll's comments on Nickerson, the 2005 Press & Sun-Bulletin Athlete of the Year, are based as much on his promising future as his highly-decorated past.
Nickerson has been chosen Athlete of the Year three times in the past four years (he won in 2004 and 2002). Two other athletes have been selected as often: King Rice, a Binghamton High School football and basketball star selected three times in the 1980s, and Bob Campbell, a Vestal High School football, basketball and track athlete who distinction in 1962, '63 and '64.
Nickerson edged former Binghamton Senators center Jason Spezza, who parlayed the NHL lockout into an AHL MVP season with the B-Sens, in voting by the Press & Sun-Bulletin sports staff.
In March, Nickerson won his record-setting fifth state title.
He won a senior national championship in April and two national wrestling awards in the spring.
Now, he's a freshman at Cornell, where he has already won titles in his first two college tournaments.
"So far, everything's been picture perfect for me," Nickerson said.
A SURE THING
The team spends the first hour of practice working on specific moves.
Nickerson kneels on the outside of the mat as assistant coach Steve Garland does a demonstration. He then works with teammates, honing his technique.
"For his size, he's really quick," said Matt Easter, a junior who wrestles at 141 pounds and was one of Nickerson's training partners at a recent practice. "He sets up his shots really well. He's a good scrambler, too."
During practice, he works quickly and quietly. Nickerson gets taken down as often as he takes down his workout partner.
He is, in the words of Koll, a match wrestler.
"I watched him the first couple months of practice, and he had moments of brilliance. But he had just as many moments of mediocrity," Koll said.
But once it's match time, Nickerson gets a look in his eyes. When he steps foot on the mat, he's a different person.
Nickerson finished his scholastic career at Chenango Forks with a 213-6 record. As a senior, he went 35-0. The highlight came the first weekend of March in Albany, where he beat Sean Bauer of Valley Central by technical fall, 20-5, to win the state title at 125 pounds.
The victory made him the first, and only, wrestler to win five New York State titles.
"All the national titles are great and everything," Nickerson said. "But that's the one that probably meant the most."
In April, Nickerson won the 125-pound title at Senior Nationals. In the spring, he also won the Dave Schultz High School Excellence Award (from the National Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum) and the Junior Dan Hodge Award (from Win Magazine).
In August, Nickerson came to Cornell, the school he chose over West Virginia, Harvard and Minnesota, among others.
In a way, it was a long time coming. Nickerson attended camps at Cornell when he was barely in kindergarten.
"He was doing moves better than 17-18 year olds, and I'm not kidding," said Koll, who has been Cornell's head coach since 1993 and has been at the school since 1989. "He was a prodigy."
When Koll came to Nickerson's home in Chenango Forks to recruit him, Nickerson showed the coach an autographed poster he had gotten as kid: "Troy, I'll see you in 12 years. Coach Koll."
"I kid with other coaches. I say 'You know, we really took a chance on Troy,'" Koll said with a laugh. "He's a five-time state champion; everybody thought he had already peaked. We thought we could get more out of him.
"Troy was the closest thing to a sure thing as you can get."
MAKING THE TRANSITION
An hour into practice, wrestling stops and conditioning begins. Suddenly, what was college wrestling practice session turns into boot camp.
It's exhausting to watch.
By the end of the 10-minute session, most of the wrestlers — guys who are in top physical condition — are struggling, inching across the room.
Nickerson is always one of the first guys to finish each drill.
"Everything we do is at such a high level," he said. "I've always tried to compete at the highest level possible. Having a whole room at the same intensity as you are is definitely motivation."
Jumping into high level college wrestling was a tough task.
Nickerson is wrestling grown men now, not boys. Nearly every match is against somebody who was a state champion-quality wrestler or maybe even a college All-American.
"He's the real deal coming out of high school," said Mike Mormile, a fifth-year senior who competed in the NCAA meet last season. "But college is a lot different than high school."
On the mat, Nickerson has done exactly the same thing he did at Forks.
He won the title at Cornell's Body Bar Invitational to open the season. Then he traveled to the Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational. There, he beat the top two seeds to win the title.
Koll calls Nickerson the best wrestler he has ever had at this point in his career.
"He despises losing," Koll said. "His hatred for losing is much stronger than his desire to win. He despises it so much it propels him on more than any kid I've ever seen."
Wrestling isn't the only thing that's changed for Nickerson. He's living on campus, on his own for the first time.
The transition to college is tough enough for anybody. It's even harder for athletes, who have to balance practice and training sessions around classes.
Now imagine doing that at an Ivy League school as a pre-med student.
Nickerson admits he got off to a rocky start. He's a sociology/pre-med major and has classes such as developmental sociology, psychology and math, along with a writing seminar. He had to learn how to manage his time, to adjust to four hours of reading and school work a night outside of classes.
"It was tough to settle into the academics and jump in the wrestling room here," Nickerson said. "But after I got my priorities straight and got my schedule down of what I had to do, everything is going perfect."
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Practice is over now.
Nickerson is sitting along the wall on the near side of the room. He's stripped to his black compression shorts. A huge ice pack is taped to his left shoulder.
He's sitting with several teammates, chatting about finals and wrestling and everything else college guys talk about.
In a lot of ways, Nickerson is very much just one of the guys on this team — and that's meant in the best possible way.
Part of it is the program. Cornell's one of college wrestling's elite. From 2001-2005, when Nickerson won his five high school titles, Cornell won four Ivy League championships. Last season, Cornell placed fourth at the NCAA meet. Travis Lee, a 2005 graduate, won a national title at 133 pounds last season.
As impressive as Nickerson's resumé was coming into Cornell, his teammates weren't about to put him on a pedestal.
"Even the guys that aren't starters on this team were state champs multiple times or high school All-Americans," Mormile said.
Nickerson, always known for his work ethic, threw himself into training. He's quick, he's technically sound, and in the words of his Koll, freakishly strong. He'll go up and down the climbing rope five, 10 times in a row without stopping.
"He had to earn his respect on this team, and now he's done that," Mormile said.
But while he's one of the guys, in some ways he stands alone. Nobody in the room has the expectations of him that Nickerson does.
He's well-known in wrestling's circles, and he's well scrutinized. On one message board of a popular wrestling Web site, Nickerson is mentioned in more than 200 threads — plenty of which either make jokes about the 18-year-old or question his ability.
"Everybody keeps waiting for Troy to pay his dues," Koll said. "Now, they're saying he hasn't wrestled a top 2-3 kid. You know, there aren't too many levels he can possibly go through before you have to admit 'Hey, the kid's pretty darn good. ' "
Nickerson reads the stuff on the Internet. He laughs off a lot of it. He uses some of it for motivation.
"I really wanted to not only live up to my expectations, but other peoples' and show them that I could win right from the start," Nickerson said.
OLYMPIC DREAMS
In the end, nothing anybody can post on a Web site can match the expectations he places on himself.
The question for Nickerson is obvious — what's next? After a historic high school career, what can this kid do for an encore?
"This year, if nothing else, I want to try to win a national title," Nickerson said almost nonchalantly, without a hint of ego or arrogance.
After this college season, Nickerson plans to try out for Team USA at the World Team Trials in Iowa.
The major goal is the 2008 Olympics. Not just making the USA team, but becoming the youngest gold medalist.
"I look at all of this as practice for the Olympics for him," Koll said.
Neither Koll nor Nickerson are predicting these things will happen. There are too many variables. The competition is so much stronger and better than anything he faced in high school.
Plus, there's the issue of balance. With his goals and peoples' expectations so high, how do you judge success? One second-place finish would, to some people, tarnish everything.
In a quiet moment before practice, Nickerson admits it's all a little mind blowing.
To think he's already accomplished so much, yet still has so much to prove. To say his goals are to win a national championship and make the Olympic team, and realize those aren't pipe dreams.
"It's hard to believe that I am that close," Nickerson said. "That's what kind of helps drive me to work hard in practice every day and keep working harder and harder — to know I'm that close and have the capabilities of being at that level."
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