School: Plymouth Whitemarsh
Wrestling
Favorite athlete: Emmitt Smith
Favorite team: Dallas Cowboys
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: A kid whispered for me to pin him in my ear and then proceeded to flatten his shoulders across the mat!
Music on iPod: Eminem, Kenye West, some oldies
Future plans: University of North Carolina for Business Administration
Words to live by: ‘There is no glory in practice, but without practice there is no glory.’
One goal before turning 30: Coach a State Champion of All-American
One thing people don’t know about me: I watch the TV show ‘Glee.’
By Alex Frazier
Dreams do come true.
Ask Plymouth Whitemarsh’s John Michael Staudenmayer.
He had three come true this year.
One was to go undefeated. He finished his high school season at 42-0 and for his career 168-12.
In four years of high school wrestling, he won four Section Three and District One North titles, two Southeast Regional crowns and one PIAA State Championship.
Wednesday evening he extended his unbeaten streak wrestling in the Delaware Valley Wrestling Officials All-Star Challenge, in which a team from Southeastern Pennsylvania took on a team from Central/South Jersey.
Staudenmayer defeated Franklin’s Colin Hewitt, 2-1 to help PA defeat NJ 46-10
His second goal was to win a state championship. As a sophomore he went 1-2 at states and last year he placed third.
On March 12, Staudenmayer dominated Neal Grudi of Spring Grove in the PIAA finals in Hershey, 15-2, to make his championship dream come true.
His third goal was to attend the University of North Carolina on a scholarship.
Yes, that became a reality too.
His list of college choices included a number of prestigious schools including Virginia, Bucknell, Lehigh and Princeton.
UNC was the first school to contact him and became the most persistent. UNC coach C.D. Mock was a former Council Rock state champion, so he knows the area. Staudenmayer will also be able to train with former four-time PA State Champion Cary Kolat.
“They have a spot available for me, a beautiful campus and the No. 1 public education in the country,” said Staudenmayer, explaining his reasons for choosing UNC. “I love the guys down there. They got me excited about what they’re doing right. I’m on board with it.”
UNC students enter school undecided and don’t choose majors until their junior year. Staudenmayer is considering business administration.
As strong as his wrestling credentials were, Staudenmayer’s academic record was also commendable. He carries a 4.23 grade point average (3.67 unweighted) and takes honors engineering and government.
Not surprisingly, one day he hopes to coach wrestling at the collegiate level.
Extracurricularly, he is also involved in the Best Buddies program at PW.
“You get paired with a special needs kid,” he said. “You talk on the phone, hang out with him once or twice a month and build a relationship.”
Staudenmayer started wrestling for the Greater Norristown Youth Wrestling Club when he was five years old.
A neighbor asked him to come watch him wrestle.
He had a great time, but his mother didn’t like it at all.
“My mom ended up crying out in the gym, ‘My kids will never do this,’” said Staudenmayer. “We (John Michael and his younger brother Justin) begged every day for a year to wrestle, and finally she said, ‘They’ll go in once, get their butts kicked and they’ll never want to do it again.’ As you can see, she was absolutely wrong on that one.”
Staudenmayer didn’t start off as a stud wrestler. In fact, he didn’t win his first tournament until his fourth year wrestling.
“I got beat up for a while,” he said.
In sixth grade Staudenmayer began wrestling for the Maverick Wrestling Club at Germantown Academy. That’s where he met his high school coach Nate Wachter.
He worked with Staudenmayer until eighth grade.
“I was used to wrestling this little punk,” said Wachter. “He jumped from 103 pounds to 145 pounds in two summers. I figured I could just let him play around with my leg and he got in and tore my MCL. That was the last time I ever played around with him. It was strictly business from then on.”
And business is the way Staudenmayer approaches wrestling.
“He wants to be the best at whatever he’s doing,” said Wachter.
Every day in the wrestling room, Staudenmayer has to contend not only with Wachter, a former National Prep champ and four-time NCAA qualifier at Penn State, but former PW state champ Justin Giovinco and assistant coach Dominic Sabia.
“We were college wrestlers so he gets to wrestle grown men that he’s not going to wrestle in high school, so if he can take us down, he can take anybody down, so we give him that confidence,” Wachter said.
Of course when Staudenmayer is taken down, he will get frustrated, but he uses it as a learning tool.
“He doesn’t like getting taken down,” said Wachter. “He’ll want to learn what we took him down with and what he’s doing wrong.”
Having good competition in the wrestling room is important, but being self-driven is also key.
Wachter gives each wrestler a lifting program. He said that Staudenmayer not only did that, but his own as well.
“He comes in the room late because he’s doing extra sets in the weight room,” said Wachter.
In addition, he stays after practice working on conditioning, live wrestling or drills.
“He’s a naturally talented athlete,” said Wachter. “He has that muscle twitch, that explosiveness, but he’s had the right coaching since he was young, and it’s turned him into a good wrestler, but he’s worked his butt off to get there.”
After he showers, he’ll hang around and help coach the Greater Norristown Wrestling Club practice at least once a week.
“If they need a partner, I’ll go in and drill with somebody,” he said. “Most of the time I walk around and help coach, give back a little bit to where I grew up.”
Having a wrestler like Staudenmayer in the room only elevates the rest of the team.
Staudenmayer took on the task of writing a journal for SuburbanOneSports.com this season. Reading it, you could not only tell how focused he was on his own goals, but also how much the development of the rest of the team meant to him.
“He’s a very vocal leader,” said Wachter. “He’s pushing every kid in the room. He leads by example and he’s very coachable.”
In his growing years, he was a three-sport athlete, playing soccer and baseball in addition to wrestling.
He also started football in fourth grade for the Conshocken Bears. His father was a “football guy,” but even he urged John Michael to wait until middle school.
Just like he convinced his mother to wrestle, he talked his father into allowing him to start early.
Staudenmayer played football for three years in high school with his father as head coach. He was a linebacker, a tight end and a punter.
“He was a great football player,” said Wachter.
“I liked it,” he said. “It was different than soccer. It was a contact sport, but I could tell it wasn’t my favorite sport.”
Injuries took their toll.
In ninth grade, he broke his hand. As a sophomore and junior, he developed bursitis in his knees that hampered him during wrestling.
Though he might have battled through the injuries and continued football, his heart was really with wrestling.
“I was growing tired of it and it was beating me up,” he said. “Wrestling just became a love of mine.”
Especially when UNC started pursuing him as a junior.
“He wanted to wrestle for UNC so he started making that his No. 1 priority,” said Wachter.
With all three of Staudenmayer’s dreams coming true, he could consider his high school career complete.
But there is a fourth looming on the horizon.
On March 27, he will compete in the prestigious Dapper Dan Classic, which matches a senior all-star Pennsylvania team against the best of the rest of the United States.
Staudenmayer will be facing the No. 1-ranked 171-pounder in the country, Logan Storley of South Dakota. Storley won Junior Nationals last year at a different weight class than Staudenmayer and holds a gaudy career record of 168 wins against three losses, including six state titles.
“It looks like we have similar styles,” said Staudenmayer. “I’m just going to go in there. I’m not going to scout him, just do my thing. It seems to be working so far. If I go in there with the mentality that it’s just another match, I can definitely at the least keep it close and I think I have a shot at it.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t want to go out losing his last high school match,” said Wachter. “He wants to go out as a winner.”
