Momentary escape

The Forum, Fargo, North Dakota

Mike Maresh

By Jeff Kolpack jkolpack@forumcomm.com
Sports - 01/12/2006

Mike Maresh was done with wrestling when he enrolled at North Dakota State in the fall of 2004. His addiction to the sport appeared to have been licked when he began his Bison football career.

But a visit to the NDSU wrestling room here, a talk with a wrestler there and, over time, the itch returned. This weekend, Maresh will start at heavyweight for the Bison at the Virginia Duals in Hampton, Va.

“It’s been rough, I won’t lie,” Maresh said. “It’s a lot different than football, that’s for sure. But it’s coming back fast.”

Maresh was a 230-pound freshman starting linebacker for the Bison last fall, finishing sixth on the team in tackles with 50. He’s now up to 245 pounds.

“I ate during the break,” he said. “I wanted to put some weight on because I was worried I would lose weight because the practices are so intense.”

He’ll still lift with the football team during winter workouts. He has the blessing of head football coach Craig Bohl to do both sports, as long as his academics are fine.

Maresh was a three-time USA Wrestling All-American and a Minnesota state champion at Champlin Park High School. If he was looking at college for wrestling only, NDSU head coach Bucky Maughan figures the elite Division I wrestling schools would have been after him.

“Now that he’s in two sports, will he develop?” Maughan said. “Who knows. I think he has the potential to be a tremendous heavyweight.”

Athletes combining football and wrestling is not new to Maughan. Nobody, however, has done it at a top level since the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Bob Backlund was the most successful, with a national title at 190 pounds in 1971. Don Meyer wasn’t far behind, a runnerup at heavyweight in the 1976 national tournament.

Mike Cichy, Marv Mortenson and Pat Simmers were North Central Conference heavyweight runnerups in 1964, 1969 and 1974, respectively. Simmers was third in 1971.

Jim Twardy was second in the conference meet at 177 in 1969. Perry Kozlowski and Gary Leuer finished third at 190 in 1969 and 1978, respectively.

The problem in combining the sports is the conditioning factor. Maughan said it takes wrestlers at least two to three weeks to get into wrestling shape because the average play in football is six to seven seconds. “In wrestling, you’re in there for a solid seven minutes,” Maughan said. That’s been obvious to Maresh, who said he’s not holding high expectations this year because of his layoff. “When I came out of high school, I made up my mind that I was done wrestling,” he said. “But it’s hard to stop doing something that you’re good at. I missed it.”

Readers can reach Forum reporter Jeff Kolpack at (701) 241-5546