Wrestling
Favorite athlete: David Taylor
Favorite team: Philadelphia Eagles
Favorite memory competing in sports: Beating Neshaminy freshman year.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Teammate thought he had to wrestle “BYE”
Future plans: Go to college, wrestle in college and graduate
Words to live by: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
One goal before turning 30: Have an established career
One thing people don’t know about me: I enjoy listening to old school songs.
By Ed Morrone
To truly excel in the sport of wrestling, one must not only fully commit to its physical demands, but also the war waged on mind and spirit.
This is true in most competitive sports, sure, but anyone who’s ever been around serious wrestlers knows they are a rare breed, from adhering to an insanely strict diet to grueling workouts designed to shave off pounds in short intervals in order to hit an exact weight before a match. All athletes work tirelessly to perfect their crafts; that said, there will likely be few arguments in the assertion that it takes a certain kind of crazy to attack the sport’s challenges head-on.
Gunnar Fuss has been one of the crazy ones since he began wrestling competitively at 8 or 9 years old. He, like many accomplished wrestlers, wear the sport’s rigorous demands like a badge of honor, knowing full well that if you can master it, there are few other challenges that will seem daunting.
“I read a quote once that said ‘Once you wrestle, everything in life is easier,’” said Fuss, a senior at Harry S Truman High School. “That’s definitely true. You have to be disciplined to go through it. Wrestling is all about practice. Nothing is guaranteed in the sport; it’s all earned.”
Fuss said he tried other sports before landing on the mat, but he knew after his first practice that he was hooked to the lifestyle he would soon begin familiarizing himself with. Practices were and still are brutal: six days a week, and so physically-punishing that Fuss said it’s routine to lose five pounds of body weight in a single practice session. Matches, meanwhile, only last six minutes, but Fuss said it feels more like 20 out there.
“There’s no going through the motions,” he said. “You can’t just show up to practice; you have to get one percent better every day. Keep improving, and at some point that’s going to pay off. But it’s a long process, and it’s not one you can just jump back into after weeks away, like you can in football.
“It takes weeks just to get your body into shape enough to wrestle a match. And it’s not just the physical; mentally, it just makes you stronger as a person and athlete to the point where you feel like you can overcome all obstacles.”
Fuss practices what he preaches, and the proof is in the pudding. As he approaches the end of his final high school season, Fuss has been the model for consistency when it comes to personal domination. He’s wrestled in 146 matches as of this writing, winning 125 of them (including a 23-3 mark this season, and he’s currently wrestling in the 132-pound weight class). Fuss has won three SOL National titles in three tries, as well as three District 1 East championships. Fuss won a 2018 Southeast Regional crown and has qualified for the PIAA state tournament in each of the last three years, placing 8th and earning a medal as a junior.
Now, with little time left, Fuss has become singularly focused on his last unchecked box in his list of wrestling achievements: win a gold medal at states.
“To place at states, that’s just a different feeling than everything else,” he said. “At that top level, everyone you’re wrestling is good, so it becomes a matter of how much you’re able to grit out a match to get a win.
“To win a gold medal, it would be a dream come true. All the hard work you put into this sport, it’s years of work and a lot of mental and physical strain. You get out what you put in.”
Truman head wrestling coach Jesse Dunn has known Fuss since middle school, and it was evident early on that this kid was wired a little differently than most of the others Dunn had coached. Fuss, Dunn said, had an unwavering vision and commitment to excellence, even early on.
“As an eighth grader, I asked him what it is that he wanted to get out of his high school experience, and he told me he wanted to win a state title,” Dunn recalled. “So it’s cool to see things unfold as they have. He wanted to be in the state tournament every year, wanted to win a medal; the checklist is going along just as we planned.
“Now we’ve reached the last go round: it’s all or nothing here. Gunnar is a veteran now. He’s been on that podium, been in the medal round … everything is familiar, so his comfort level is good, putting him in a great place for a stress-free, enjoyable last go round. Things have lined up in the right direction for him.
“But I will say this: he’s put in enough work, so no matter what happens in March, Gunnar should be very satisfied with the career he’s had.”
All of the personal sacrifices Fuss has made for the sport he loves have paid off in more ways than one, none bigger than earning a scholarship to Columbia University, one of only eight Ivy League schools in America. As obsessed as Fuss is with his success on the mat, he’s just as driven toward his academics. Dunn said Fuss is so methodical in his studying that the student has never gotten a ‘B’ grade in school.
For Fuss, simplifying his approach has made balancing the rigors of wrestling and what it takes to be a straight-A student.
“My motivation comes from my own need to be successful,” he said. “I don’t want to go through life wondering what could have been, but rather, how great I can be. I just want to be a better person all around, and keeping up in every aspect of my life is the best way to do that. There’s no slacking in anything I do; if I push myself in every aspect of my life, good things are going to come.”
Wrestling punishes body and mind alike, and Fuss said that for a long time, he was drawn to a career in the medical field based simply on the high volume of doctor visits he’s made in his life. However, he’s now looking at engineering as a career path, saying that studying physics this year has really opened up his eyes to the variety of the field.
“I’m still contemplating what I want to do,” Fuss said of his Columbia curriculum. “One of the many good things about Columbia is that I can be undecided and test out different classes to see what I like.
“It’s another reason I chose Columbia, you’re open to so many opportunities there. I fell in love with it. The campus is right in the middle of New York, but you wouldn’t even know it because it’s so enclosed. Then you come outside and there’s rivers, bridges, restaurants everywhere. The coaches really drew me in to that experience and did a great job recruiting me.”
After seeing Fuss continuously outdo himself over the last almost four years, Dunn surely isn’t betting against his star wrestler once he reaches the Ivy League this coming autumn.
“Gunnar has an unparalleled ability to balance his wrestling and academics, and that was a selling point that stood out to coaches who recruited him,” Dunn said. “He’s earned that ability that he’s developed strictly through hard work.
“On the mat, he’s the whole package. There may be kids across the state who can outwrestle and out-finesse him, but I’d be surprised if there are any kids as strong as Gunnar physically.
“His wrestling IQ is very high. Not only that, but he can maintain his composure even when he’s down. He’ll just view the score as 0-0, and if there’s still time on the clock, there’s still time to win. He’s trailed in big important matches in his career, and he just finds a way. He’s had a vision on where he’s wanted to go for years, and he’s stayed the course.”
For Fuss, part of that vision was sacrificing personal enjoyment that most other teenage kids live for. During summers when his friends were all enjoying their break from school, Fuss locked himself inside his home to meticulously prepare for the SAT. He even admitted that his friends sometimes have to force him out of the house so he can join them at the movies.
“For Gunnar, it’s practice, stay late for his extra workouts, go home to clean up, homework and study, sleep,” Dunn said. “Then he repeats it all again the next day. For a teenage kid to prioritize like that, it’s just uncommon, and it’s maybe the one thing that most makes him, him.”
Given the results he’s achieved, telling Fuss to take a breather is a hard sell. When asked the harder aspect of the sport to master, the mental or physical, Fuss didn’t hesitate, and his answer shone a light on the method to his madness.
“Definitely mental,” Fuss said. “Either way, you’re going to be physically tired at the end of every practice. That’s what we sign up for. But at the end when you are most tired, how much harder are you going to push yourself than the other person? I know my opponent is working just as hard as I am, so how can I push past that to the point of being a better wrestler?”
If you want to beat Gunnar Fuss on the mat or in life, you better be willing to outwork him between the ears.
Good luck.
