Legacy’s Funk eyeing a Class 5A crown
Third of the family’s five wrestling sons makes his name known this winter.
Most gritty wrestling tales don’t begin with a love story. This one does.
Mike Funk met Colleen Senich at Northwestern in the late 1980s, where he was a four-time AllAmerica wrestler while she was a three-time All-america field hockey player who also starred in lacrosse. The two were inducted into Northwestern’s Hall of Fame in 2004.
That romance and subsequent marriage would go on to have major effects on the Colorado high school wrestling scene some three decades later, with the third of the Funk’s five wrestling sons making his name well-known this winter.
Following in the footsteps of older brothers Nolan and Aidan, both of whom now wrestle at the Colorado School of Mines, junior Grady Funk was ranked No. 1 by On The Mat in Class 5A at 160 pounds entering regionals, where he was runner-up. And as his dad explained, Grady’s grappling skills have progressed even more rapidly than those of his older brothers.
“Nolan didn’t really start to blossom until about halfway through his junior season, Aidan seemed to be about a year ahead of that, and then Grady a little earlier than that,” Mike Funk said. “They’ve each started to blossom earlier, and I think that’s from having an older brother go through the process and being able to watch everything they’ve been through.”
Grady watched Nolan and Aidan become captains at Legacy, where the duo racked up a combined 200 varsity wins and three state podium appearances. He also witnessed the anguish each endured after losing state title matches, Nolan at 195 in 2016 and Aidan at 170 last season.
“Both of them kind of got caught in the finals,” Grady Funk recalled. “I remember Nolan tried to throw his guy and got caught (in the move), and Aiden got caught in a cradle a little bit. Both of them gave up unnecessary back points, which is really what lost them the matches. If I’m fortunate to get there, I’m going to try to keep good position.”
Considering the Funks wrestle to a “slow peak,” as Lightning coach Mike Thompson explained, what Grady accomplishes during the state tournament at the Pepsi Center on Thursday through Saturday will only be the start of a career with plenty of more ceiling to reach. Grady has hopes of earning a Division I scholarship, although he acknowledged joining his brothers at Division II Mines is a possibility.
“He’s a tactical wrestler who’s very similar in style to his brothers,” Thompson said. “He has solid technique, and he wins with the foundations of wrestling. He wins with basic moves, and he just does it better than the next guy.”
The 5-foot-10 Grady (30-12 this season) acknowledged he “doesn’t try to force shots,” but rather his effectiveness is underscored by his ability to read the foe.
“I wait for openings the other guy gives me, and score off those,” he said.
The older brothers believe Grady’s ready to elevate his performance from his sixth-place finish in the same weight at state last year.
“It’s one thing wrestling at state, and it’s another thing wrestling out there with only a few other matches going on, under the lights, in front of that many people,” Aidan Funk said. “It’s a lot of pressure, but he’s seen me and Nolan do it, and we’ve talked to him. He’s got a good handle on what to expect from that.”
The Funk family will be on hand Thursday as preliminaries get underway downtown. Nolan and Aidan will be there, as will the parents who gifted Grady his uber-athletic genes. Also in attendance throughout the weekend will be younger brothers Gavin, a freshman at Legacy, and Quinn, a seventh-grader.
There will be plenty of watching and learning happening -with the two youngest brothers envisioning their own role on Colorado wrestling’s biggest stage in short time.