Wrestling
Favorite Athlete: Andrew Alirez
Favorite team: Lehigh wrestling
Favorite memory competing in sports: Breaking the school win record
Most embarrassing moment competing in wrestling: Letting a kid take me down in a match
Music on playlist: Late 90s and early 2000s rap
Words to live by: “Have fun and let it rip.”
One goal before turning 30: Having a family
One thing people don’t know about me: I never won a wrestling match until my third year of wrestling.
By GORDON GLANTZ
For further proof that big things come in small packages, consider the case of Quakertown’s Mason Ziegler.
The 121-pounder recently brought home bronze from the state wrestling championships in Hershey a year after claiming silver.
“Right before my match (for bronze), it’s when the emotions of it being my last high school wrestling match sort of hit me,” said Ziegler. “I was trying to keep myself together and keep myself from not crying. It was just another wrestling match, until it wasn’t. I didn’t really realize that until about 20 minutes before my bronze medal match.”
His coach, Kurt Handel, was among those deeply affected by the moment.
“He ended up losing in the semifinals,” said the longtime wrestling coach. “He was pretty heartbroken. His dad carried him off the mat. They have such an incredible bond; such an incredible relationship. I don’t think I’ve seen it in my 29 years of coaching.
“His dreams were shattered. He had about one hour to get himself together and wrestle in his next match against a super tough kid. He got himself together and won a 1-0 match. That, to me, was just a gut check. It shows how mentally and physically tough this young man is. He was able to rebound from such a major letdown and such adversity. He was able to get himself together and wrestle one of the top kids in the state.
“I told him, afterwards, that it was one of the most courageous things I’ve seen him do in his four years with us.”
Those four years include 167 wins, which is a program record. Ziegler is also a three-time regional champion and a four-time district champion, all firsts for Quakertown.
But this snapshot of his wrestling career does not even begin to encapsulate the whole student-athlete.
“On top of all that, he’s just a great kid,” said Handel. “He’s a role model to the younger kids. He takes them for workouts. It’s not about him. It’s about making the whole Quakertown program better.
“He’s that once in a lifetime type of athlete that you get to coach.”
Natural Leader
Handel was aware of Ziegler and some of his cohorts coming into Quakertown.
“We knew we had this group coming up through the youth organization, which was run by Mason’s dad, Dan, and Collin Gaj’s dad, Bryan Gaj,” said Handel. “They were putting a lot of time into the youth program. One was head coach and one was assistant coach. They were winning everything up in the Lehigh Valley. I was well aware that this group was coming through.”
Handel realized he had something special when Ziegler actually received votes for captain as a sophomore.
“The kids vote for captains,” the Panthers’ coach said. “He got a lot of votes for captain his sophomore year. That was a team that very successful. I thought, ‘Wow, this is pretty amazing. He’s a sophomore getting votes from juniors and seniors to be captain.’ But, at that point in his career, he was that guy who was just grinding.”
Ziegler is aware of why others were taking note of himself and others in his class.
“Our sophomore year, we kind of started a winning culture,” said Ziegler. “We established a work ethic in the high school (wrestling) room. Ever since my sophomore year, with the kids coming up, we just tried to preach to them about hard work and pushing yourself constantly to be the best wrestler and human that you can be.”
Ziegler, who wanted to extend his gratitude to his family and his teammates and his club and school coaches, approached being captain the same way he did his role as a wrestler with high expectations for everyone around him.
“I take the leadership role very seriously,” he said. “I do my best to make everybody around me better. That’s why I was captain my junior and senior year, and why I got votes to be captain my sophomore year.”
Humble Beginnings
With his dad, Dan Ziegler, a state runner-up for Saucon Valley in 1996, Mason Ziegler set the bar high for himself.
“The goal, for the longest time, was to get the state gold and become a state champion,” said Ziegler. “The main reason for that was to show my dad that I was better wrestler than he was. It was just a competition type of thing, but I have a really special bond with my dad.
“My dad is my best friend. He has been my coach forever. He has guided me through my whole career. He has not only helped with my techniques in wrestling, but also the mindset. He just really helps me, and I am very lucky to have a dad like that.”
The younger Ziegler’s wrestling career goes back to the same Quakertown Youth Wrestling Club where many of his teammates cut their teeth.
“My parents sat me down when I was about 5 years old,” he recalled. “They asked me if I wanted to start wrestling. I said, ‘yeah,’ and they proceeded to tell me that wrestling was a commitment. Being 5 years old, I didn’t really know what the word ‘commitment’ really meant.”
He soon learned.
“My dad and I, we went to our first practice and everything was fine,” Ziegler remembered. “But, once we got to our first few competitions, I wasn’t doing very well. I really didn’t want to wrestle anymore. I wanted to quit. My dad and mom were like, ‘OK, but let’s wait until you are done elementary school. Let’s wait until middle school before you stop wrestling.’ After that, I never really thought about quitting again, I just worked hard and tried to get better. My goal was just to try to be the best I could be.”
Still, Ziegler can’t drive the point home enough about what a long and strange trip it has been from being a kid who couldn’t buy win to being his school’s all-time winningest grappler.
“It’s been a gradual process for me,” said Ziegler. “I didn’t really have much success until high school.
“After my third year of wrestling, I had zero wins. I went undefeated in losing. My dad said that something I could do to get better was to do 100 pushups, 100 sit-ups and 40 pull-ups every day. From third grade on, I’ve done that.”
As for all he has achieved since almost quitting, Ziegler almost has to pinch himself.
“I never thought that I could do it,” he said. “After my junior year, I had 117 wins. I was 30 wins away from tying (the Quakertown record), so I was thinking, ‘OK, this is very doable. I’m going to do everything I can to get as many matches as possible and win a lot of wrestling matches as well.’ So, yeah, it was a really cool feeling. It’s kind of crazy.”
Working on a Dream
Ziegler’s work ethic clearly intensified in high school.
In addition to pre-dawn lifting in the mornings to get his weight down after an early-season knee injury, Ziegler would practice after school and then work out at two elite wrestling clubs (one in Delaware County and the other in Reading).
Then he would press rewind and play and hit the repeat button.
He said: “The way I looked at it was, ‘Other kids are sleeping right now while I’m putting in extra work.’ When I didn’t feel like doing it, it helped me knowing that I was doing it early in the morning when no one else was willing to.”
Going to practice? All part of the fun.
“I look at it as the best part of my day, going to wrestling practice and seeing my friends,” he said. “It’s not something that I have to do, it’s something that I want to do.”
It didn’t go unnoticed.
“He led by example, but he found his voice,” said Handel. “He became more comfortable with telling the kids, ‘Hey, you’re not doing this right. You need to do it this way.’ He became more of a vocal leader by halfway through his junior year. Since then, he has been a leader by example both through his voice and his actions.”
Another Goal Attained
By his own admission, Ziegler says the time spent on wrestling room may have slightly affected his work in the classroom, but not enough to stop him from earning a scholarship to continue his wrestling career with the storied Lehigh University program that recently had five top seeds when the NCAA brackets were recently released and has had numerous All-Americans.
“I wasn’t recruited very heavily,” said Ziegler. “After my sophomore year, I had a decent amount of schools reach out to me. I had a list. I reached out to a bunch of schools. Lehigh has been one of my top 5 schools ever since I was a little kid. It’s like a dream come true to be able to get a scholarship and wrestle for the Lehigh Mountain Hawks.”
He will have plenty of support in the bleachers in Bethlehem.
“All of my family is from the Lehigh Valley, so there will be a whole lot of Zieglers coming in the next couple of years,” he said.
Wrestling or not, his transcript needed to be up to snuff to get an offer from a school like Lehigh.
Aside from English, his Achilles Heel, Ziegler takes honors and AP classes and carries a solid 3.5 GPA.
“I do the best that I can with having to do double practices every night and not being home much,” he said. “I ask questions in class if I’m struggling. I try to be the most respectful and hard-working student that I can be.”
It all comes from strong roots, he says.
“I’ve been told, for a long time, to take pride with everything that I do – whether it’s doing chores around the house, practicing my wrestling moves and in the classroom,” said Ziegler, who plans to major in finance with an eye toward being a financial adviser and then a business owner. “You have to take pride with everything you do because you have to do things all the way. If you don’t do it all the time, then it doesn’t really happen.”
