Anne Arundel coaches: ‘We were in it together’
Longtime coaches trek 41 miles on Appalachian Trail
WRESTLING
It was around 2 a.m. at the Dahlgren campground in Boonsboro when Old Mill wrestling coach Jim Grim made the mistake that would drive a stake through his morale.
He asked John Klessinger, South River’s wrestling coach, what mile marker they’d reached. He delivered the good news: They were 24 miles in.
The bad news? They had 17 to go.
“I just remember a dagger through my heart,” Grim said. “I said to myself, ‘Man we still have [17] more miles.’ I was hurting.”
Grim and Klessinger, as well as Annapolis wrestling coach Tom Sfakiyanudis, Broadneck’s Reid Bloomfield and Arundel’s Dwayne Vogel, set off Oct. 2-3 to hike the 41-mike Maryland portion of the Appalachian Trail carrying just headlamps, water, protein bars and beef jerky.
Overnight. In the pitch dark. For 17 straight hours. No breaks.
“We didn’t come up with the idea,” said Bloomfield, a novice hiker, “but we weren’t gonna let those other guys win.”
The undertaking came together when Vogel messaged the group in July. He missed the coaches he’d gotten used to being around all the time through wrestling, and together at a dinner a plan was hatched. It started with Klessinger, who’d hiked Maryland’s portion of the trail across two days in the past.
Grim kicked it up a notch. He and Klessinger had always swapped challenges and goals in the weight room. Last summer, they ran a half marathon together. All of that was appetizers compared to what Grim had in mind this time.
“I said, ‘I don’t know about that, man.’ I’d never done that before. I’d never hiked at night before. Not through the night. I’ve hiked at night, but that was like 12 consecutive hours in the dark,” Klessinger said.
After work on Friday, the coaches drove to Pen Mar Park on the Pennsylvanian border and started their hike south at 6 p.m. Most of them wouldn’t stop walking until 11 a.m. Without wrestling, the hike gave the five coaches something real to look forward to but killing time was made easier by discussing the sport they love and miss.
“What would a wrestling season look like? Would there be one at all?” Sfakiyanudis said as soon as they’d reach a solution between them, someone else would pipe up with a “what about …?”
“You got a bunch of coaches who’d normally be preparing for the season right now. … Having all that taken away, it’s great to get into the woods and talk about all that stuff with people who are going through the same thing,” Sfakiyanudis said.
Eventually, though, exhaustion kicked in. Around 8 p.m., Grim crafted a plan. They could separate the hike — in their heads anyway — into two-hour increments. Just get to midnight. Then 2 a.m. Then, eventually, tired and beat up, it was over.
“Mentally, that made it a lot easier,” Klessinger said.
Like Bloomfield, Vogel had never hiked a day in his life. Five miles in, Vogel’s knee began to ache. He considered telling the guys he was heading back, but his “wrestler mentality” consumed him and he opted to tough it out. However, just before dawn, Vogel realized he made another crucial mistake. Before the hike, Sfakiyanudis and Grim banned trekking poles. Grim admitted poles probably would have been smart, but given how “ultra competitive” they all were, they all agreed not to use them. By 4 a.m., Vogel was lagging behind some of the other coaches. Another pair of hikers who started hours after the coaches caught up to Vogel, who spotted one hiker’s poles and promptly offered him $100. They had “mercy on him,” he said, and wouldn’t accept the full amount.
“I didn’t know. I’m just dumb and naïve and didn’t do this before. What do you need poles for? Then I got out there,” Vogel said.
The others finished before Vogel reached his 37th mile, where his body couldn’t carry him any longer and he decided to head to a nearby town. Still, he valued the trek. The kindness of the hikers he came across reminded him of the close-knit wrestling community.
“I totally, 100% underestimated how it was going to be,” Vogel said. “And of course they threw all these elements in there. But I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. Definitely glad I got to experience it.”
For as many rocks that the coaches struggled over, the five had moments that still make them laugh. Bloomfield hoped they’d stumble across a snake at some point, or a bear.