Geneva senior back from Achilles tear, is 8-0

Alex Krieg had plenty of reasons to hang up his wrestling headgear and call it a career.

That’s not how he’s wired.

Late last fall and then a junior on the Geneva wrestling team, Krieg suffered an excruciating full tear of the Achilles tendon in his right ankle.

Surgery to repair a torn Achilles, not to mention the ensuing rehabilitation process, has ended many an athletic career.

But with one year remaining of high school, Krieg wasn’t going to be one of those people.

When the Geneva wrestling team gets back on the mat this weekend, it will do so with Krieg — now a senior — sporting a perfect 8-0 record at the 195-pound weight class, fully thankful that he put in the time and effort to return to the sport of wrestling for one last hoorah.

“I have a different mindset this year,” Krieg said. “It’s my senior year. There’s

COVID. I’m thankful to be out there . ... If I can’t go out and say I didn’t have fun, it’s not worth it to me. As long as I can say I had fun, that’s what’s most important.”

Krieg was coming off a breakout year as a sophomore, a season in which he qualified for the Division II district tournament in Alliance, when his wrestling career came to an abrupt halt.

Taking part in a scrimmage one week before the start of the 2019-20 season, Krieg lifted his opponent off the mat and — as the rules dictate — was taking his foe back to the mat in a safe manner.

“It felt time someone took a police baton to my right ankle,” he said. “I knew what happened. I didn’t want to admit it, but I knew.”

He went to the hospital that day, and the early prognosis was a torn Achilles’ tendon. A few days later at a consultation, the injury was confirmed.

Krieg’s heart sunk. He knew his wrestling season was over. And what a year to miss, as the Geneva wrestling team fielded one of its best top-to-bottom teams in a number of years, finishing as champion of the Chagrin Valley Conference.

But Krieg spent it sitting in the stands watching his buddies and teammates compete.

“They said it was a sixmonth recovery time,” Krieg said. “But I was back walking in 2 ½ months. It seemed like a rushed process, but I did it.”

The hardest part of the road back?

“Probably the mindset, that I CAN do this,” Krieg said. “In the weight room, it was the fear of ‘Is this too much weight? Am I pushing myself too hard? Am I pushing myself enough?’”

Now that he’s back on the mat, he can tell he pushed himself enough. He’s undefeated early on this season, though his wrestling style has changed so as to protect his surgically repaired right Achilles.

Where this senior year takes him, Krieg doesn’t know.

But he DOES know that because of his mindset during the rehab process and his refusal to give up the sport that he loves, wherever the 2020-21 season ends will be satisfactory because he will have gone out on his own terms — not on the terms of an injury.

“If I get to sectionals, great,” he said. “If i get to district, that’s great. If I get to state, that’s great. As long as I can say I had fun, that’s what’s important.”

Krieg