School: Quakertown
Golf, Wrestling
Favorite athlete: Tiger Woods
Favorite team: Phillies
Favorite memory competing in sports: “Going to wrestling camp at Ship with some of the high school team and being an assistant coach because our coaches couldn’t make it.”
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: “My nose has always bled very easily, and one wrestling match it was bleeding so bad that the trainer had to tape all the way around my head to make it stop.”
Music on iPod: The Beatles, The Who, Dave Matthews. Classic rock in general.
Future plans: Major in engineering and play a lot of golf
Favorite motto: “When it rains, it pours.”
One thing people don’t know about me: “I love math. I can honestly say I really enjoy it. Most people wonder how anyone could ever love math, and when I tell them this, they think it is very strange.”
By Alex Frazier
Two years ago Tyler Wolfe nearly quit wrestling. He didn’t.
It’s a decision he doesn’t regret.
Had he quit, his name wouldn’t be up on the wall in the Quakertown wrestling room as one of the top 10 all-time pinners.
“Last year I had a lot of questions whether I was going to come out or not,” he said, ”but I decided to do it, and I’m glad I did. I finished up strong.”
Wolfe started wrestling in third grade.
“I had a lot of friends that wrestled,” he said, “and my dad was also a big part of getting me started.”
Ironically, Wolfe’s father was a basketball player. At 6-1, Wolfe could have possibly had a career in that sport as well.
“I never played at all,” he said. “My little sister played basketball.’
One of Quakertown’s strengths as a team this year was its upper weights, and they started at 171 with Wolfe.
“He was the leader of the bigger guys,” said Quakertown coach Kurt Handel. “He definitely scored the most team points and went the furthest of all the big guys.”
Wolfe was also one of the team captains.
“He led by example,” said Handel. “He’s a pretty quiet guy, but if he doesn’t agree with you, he’ll sit and debate with you for as long as you sit and debate with him. He’s a very articulate and intelligent young man.”
Wolfe’s senior year didn’t quite end the way he had hoped. Every wrestler’s goal is to go to the state tournament and place. Wolfe came up one match shy of achieving that goal.
He had a great district tournament in which he upset No. 1 seed James Nicholson of Upper Moreland 13-3 in the semifinals before losing to Council Rock South’s Bobby Lavelle, 3-1, to place second.
Wolfe used his trademark step-to-head, near-side cradle to rack up several sets of back points against Nicholson.
The cradle is a move particularly suited to Wolfe’s long arms.
“He’s a very tall 171-pounder,” said Handel, “and has the arm span to be able to get in there and lock it up. He has the athleticism to hit that move where some guys wouldn’t be able to do that.”
Wolfe has become so known for his cradle on the team that he has earned the nickname “Teeb,” which has also become the team name for the cradle he uses.
And that move has come to his rescue on occasion.
“He’s always in the match, no matter how many points he may be down,” said Handel.
Besides helping him upset Nicholson, Wolfe’s cradle has propelled him into seventh place in career pins for Quakertown. This year he tied Jon Weibel with 22 falls. His season record was 31-13.
For his career he has 48 pins.
His final two falls came at regionals. Wolfe pinned Haverford’s Sean O’Reilly in the first round and then lost to eventual champ Robbie Fitzgerald of Downingtown East.
In the consolations, he pinned LaSalle’s C.J. Burns before losing once again to Lavelle in the semifinals. He went on to place fifth, but only four qualify for states.
“I got down early in the first period and then got caught on my back,” said Wolfe. “It was pretty much over after that.”
Regardless, it was Wolfe’s best post-season performance.
“I feel like I had a really good season,” he said. “States was my main goal, but I also felt like I helped the team a lot and had fun doing it. I have no real regrets.”
Besides wrestling, Wolfe also played golf for Quakertown.
Wolfe started golf when he worked for Fox Hollow during the summer. When he became a freshman at Quakertown, he went out for the team. He played varsity part-time as a sophomore and was a regular in the lineup his last two years.
He considers driving to be his strength on the course.
As a senior, he was captain of the team and qualified for Suburbans and districts for the first time.
Wolfe would like to continue playing golf in college, though he said he would miss wrestling.
“It gets a little tedious at times, especially with managing weight,” he said.
He is considering Penn State, Rensaleer Polytechnic Institute and Drexel. He plans on majoring in mechanical engineering.
All three of those schools offer Navy ROTC, which he plans to sign up for.
“A lot of my friends are considering it,” he said. “My grandfather was in the Navy, so it seemed like a natural choice.”
As an ROTC cadet he will get his education paid for and possibly room and board in exchange for a five-year commitment.
Getting into a good college academically is a no-brainer for Wolfe, who ranks in the top five percent of his class. He is a member of the National Honor Society and a Distinguished Honor Roll member.
He is already taking a calculus course at Lehigh University as part of the Lehigh High School Scholars Program.
“They take the top six students in the class and it’s free to take one class, he said.
Although he has taken calculus at Quakertown, he’s finding it a bit more difficult at the college level.
“It’s tough,” he said. “It’s not too much new information, but it’s definitely a different experience taking a class at a real college.”
