Studer In 54th Year of 'Growing Good People'
By
Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com
February 19, 2020
BATTLE CREEK — Dave Studer knew he was too small to play varsity football in high school, and when someone approached him about wrestling, “I had no clue what it was,” he said.
“I thought they did it in a ring like pro wrestling.”
That was in the early 1960s at Port Huron High School. Intrigued, Studer decided to try it and got hooked.
In fact, he got so hooked, he is now in his 54th year as head wrestling coach at Battle Creek Harper Creek.
Although he is still going strong, he does not get down on the mats to grapple with his wrestlers any more. That is the job of assistant coach Joe Yurisich.
“I’m their practice dummy most of the days,” Yurisich said, laughing.
Studer, 75, has received many accolades, including induction into the Harper Creek High School Hall of Fame and Michigan Wrestling Association Hall of Fame.
But there is one thing missing from his resume – a trip to the MHSAA Team Finals.
This year’s are Feb. 28-29 at Wings Stadium in Kalamazoo.
“The first two years I coached, I had some outstanding teams, but they didn’t have a team state meet at that time,” Studer said. (The team championship format was created in 1988.)
“One of the best teams I ever had, every kid won 80 percent of their matches, but we didn’t have any kind of team thing.”
Last week, the Beavers took a 17-3 record into Districts, winning their fifth consecutive title. They defeated Richland Gull Lake 46-24, then swept Vicksburg 84-0.
The Beavers will host Plainwell today in a Division 2 Regional first-round match.
Temporary beginning
After wrestling for four years at Western Michigan University, Studer graduated and had a government job when he got a phone call in 1967.
“They said Harper Creek’s wrestling coach was in an accident and they needed somebody to stand in for a little bit,” he said. “I said, ‘Sure I’ll do that.’
“My very first match, we just got beat terrible. I thought, maybe I’m not doing things right but I kept working at it. By the end of the season, we won the Regional Championship.”
The school district offered Studer the position and a job teaching physical education at the elementary school, and that sealed the deal.
He eventually taught psychology, then physical education and weightlifting at the high school, retiring from the classroom in 2001.
“I just like the people and the community,” he said. “We had a lot of support. The young men I was getting were good, hard-working kids.
“I had some other opportunities to go other places but I told them no, I was real happy right here.”
He still feels that way after 54 years. Things change of course, and one he’d like to see switch back are more opportunities for dual meets – the team had only two home meets this year but used to have six to eight, which provided more opportunities to create excitement for the sport in the community.
Plus, one of those past duals remains among his favorite memories.
“We were wrestling Lakeview at the old high school,” he said. “We had over 2,700 people come to that dual meet.
“The fire marshal turned away over 300 people. That’s why I like dual meets. People had to sit on the gym floor because we ran out of bleachers.”
Second generations
Studer coached the fathers of many of his wrestlers, including Yurisich, who graduated from Harper Creek and Olivet College in the early 2000s.
“There really hasn’t been much change since I was in school,” Yurisich said. “The cool thing is that my father (Steve), who was (Studer’s) assistant a few years ago, also wrestled for Coach Studer.”
Steve Yurisich graduated in 1978 “so he wrestled for him in a different era,” his son said.
“We’ve had conversations. (Studer’s) mentality for the sport and his passion for the kids has never changed since my father can remember from ’78 to present day.”
Senior Trevor Brooks, who wrestles at 145 pounds, said he has learned a lot from Studer.
“He brings a lot of emotion and intensity and pride,” Brooks said. “We have to keep that pride up, knowing that we’re a good team and we have to keep the tradition going.
“I’ve learned a lot of life skills from him. You should never take a moment for granted because any given moment it can be taken from you because of injury. You just have to go out there and wrestle like it’s your last match.”
Yurisich, who teaches fifth grade math and science at the middle school, said Studer is in it for the kids.
Brooks joins seniors Greylon Dishman, Chandler Froehlich, Aspen Tyler Kortz, Jaden Mainstone and Ethan Shipley. Juniors are Brian DeJesus Castellanos Camacho, Joseph Edmonds, Easton Kolassa, Jake Pancoft, Noah Szarejko, Bryce Trimm and Merritt Wilson. The team’s lone sophomore is Matthew Martinez, and freshmen are Zachary Egan and Nicholas Martinez.
“The biggest thing that I notice as a coach and didn’t necessarily notice as a kid is he’s always trying to make the kid a better person later on in life, not necessarily at what they’re doing at the moment,” Yurisich said.
“Making sure that we grow good, young men, rather than just grow wrestlers.”
The outpouring of love from his wrestlers and supporters was evident four years ago when Studer was honored during his 50th year of coaching.
The school raised more than $40,000 for a scholarship and new wrestling mat.
Studer has not wavered from his original way of coaching.
“We worked a lot on mental training, getting mentally tough, not on winning and losing,” he said.
“I’ve never faulted kids when they get beat. I tell them it’s not the end of the world, it’s just one wrestling match. You’ve got your whole life to be a winner.”
Working with the athletes is what keeps him going.
“I enjoy it,” he said. “When I get to a point where I don’t enjoy it or I don’t think I’m doing a good job, then I will retire.”
Pam Shebest served as a sportswriter at the Kalamazoo Gazette from 1985-2009 after 11 years part-time with the Gazette while teaching French and English at White Pigeon High School. She can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Calhoun, Kalamazoo and Van Buren counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Battle Creek Harper Creek sophomore Matthew Martinez locks up an opponent this season. (Middle) From left, coach Dave Studer, assistant Joe Yurisich and senior Trevor Brooks. (Below) Studer talks things over with senior Greylon Dishman. (Action photos by Jennifer Brooks; head shots by Pam Shebest.)
Vance Bounces Back to Finish as Champ
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
March 10, 2020
It took a day for Tristan Vance to fully appreciate what he had accomplished.
The Clio senior won the Division 2 189-pound championship Saturday at the MHSAA Individual Wrestling Finals. Quite often, it takes some time before the gravity of the moment sets in. For Vance, that was partially true. But mostly, he was too sore to celebrate in a big way.
“That night, I was happy about it and celebrating about it, but I was so sore,” Vance said. “My back started spasming up right after the match. I was just so sore. I wanted to get home, and I wanted to rest. The next day, I was ecstatic.”
The spasms were nothing new to Vance, but rather a painful reminder of what he had to endure to get to this point. He missed more than half of the season because of them and didn’t return to the mat until the postseason.
While Vance himself wasn’t showing the elation and emotion that comes with overcoming what he did, his coach and father, Tony, certainly was understanding of the achievement.
“All I wanted to do is find my wife in the stands and give her a hug and kiss,” Tony Vance said. “It was the best feeling I think I’ve had since my kids were born. I got excited, and I kind of walked to the middle of the mat looking for her. I didn’t know where she was at, then I saw her waving to me. I climbed the wall and gave her a hug. It was such a struggle for him, and so much for us, too.”
The pain started late in the summer for Tristan, but it stemmed from a surgery he had as a 12-year-old. Back then, he was having back pain that effected the way he was walking. After consulting with multiple doctors, a benign tumor was found on his spine.
“I thought I had cancer, and I thought I was going to die – for like 10 minutes,” he said. “Until my mom was like, ‘That’s not what it is.’ After that, I’ve always been kind of chill, not too worried about things.”
The surgery to remove the tumor was successful, but that wasn’t the end of Tristan’s problems. He said he suffered from nerve damage and sciatica. His muscles were still tight, and he had to undergo rehabilitation for his left hamstring.
Eventually, he improved and blossomed into a star athlete at Clio, playing quarterback and linebacker on the football team and earning all-state honors (eighth place) on the wrestling mat as a junior.
That’s what made things even harder when the back pain returned.
“In middle school, none of that mattered to me,” Tristan said. “This year, it really kind of hit a soft spot. I was really depressed about it. I was kind of sure that I wasn’t going to be able to do anything.”
Tristan thought he had another tumor, but that was quickly ruled out. He was told that the smaller muscles around the hole where the tumor used to be were weakened and never fully recovered. The bigger muscles in his back were overcompensating, causing the spasms.
He decided, however, to play quarterback through the football season, even though he ran the ball a lot in Clio’s read-option offense.
“It got so bad where he couldn’t even run sometimes in games,” Tony Vance said. “He would play until he couldn’t play anymore.”
The motivation for Tristan was to play his final season with his friends on the football team. He did admit, though, that if he felt his wrestling season was truly threatened, he may have stopped.
When wrestling season began, the thought was to take things slow. Tristan returned to the mat in January, but his back acted up again in the New Lothrop tournament, and he was once again forced to sit.
“When I had to stop wrestling, it wasn’t because of the pain. It was because my muscles would contract and spasm, and I wasn’t able to do it physically,” he said. “It hurt my feelings. I was like, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to finish the season. I had four other guys on the team that ended up going to the state tournament with me, and I was seeing them do well and I was happy to see that, but I wanted to be part of that so bad.”
Tristan helped his teammates in the practice room, though he wasn’t sure if he would be able to compete again. As the postseason drew near, he began working out more and preparing for the possibility. The decision was made to put him into the lineup during the Team District and see how he held up.
“We ended up holding him out as long as we could,” Tony Vance said. “He wrestled (in the Team District) and felt pretty good, so I said, ‘All right, we’ll wrestle you in (Individual) Districts. I was worried, because I didn’t want to have another kid have to sit out, then take him all the way up to Gaylord and enter him into Districts and him not be able to wrestle.”
Tristan entered the District with a 10-2 record. He also entered at 189, despite having wrestled at 171 earlier in the season. He weighed around 180 pounds, and Tony Vance didn’t think adding a large weight cut to the stress already on Tristan’s body was a good idea. The bump didn’t bother Tristan, who was second in the District and first at the Regional.
He entered the Individual Finals as the No. 2 seed. But thanks to having wrestled so few matches, and the presence of undefeated Central Michigan recruit John Shelton of East Grand Rapids on the other half of the bracket, Tristan came in under the radar.
“I had a problem with that last season, where I kind of got in my head a little bit and too full of myself, which really affected me,” he said. “Coming in as an underdog – it wasn’t the most fun way for my last season to be, but it really helped with my mentality coming into the tournament.”
Tristan won handily in his first two matches before running into Fruitport’s Crue Cooper in the semifinals. Cooper was considered by many to be Shelton’s main competition heading into the Finals, but Tristan came away with the 3-1 overtime victory.
“I really wasn’t getting too excited about anything, to be honest,” Tony Vance said of his mindset coming into the tournament. “Me and my wife were just happy that he was able to wrestle again. He won a huge match in the semis. As the match was going, I was like, ‘Man. OK, he’s really looking good.’ After that match was done, I was excited. I thought, whatever happens from here, he’s made a good run. I wasn’t thinking that he was going to win it, I was just thinking that we’d see where it goes (Saturday), and I’ll be able to tell how he’s doing at the end of the first period.”
Tristan was calm as he entered his match against Shelton, even after he was informed right beforehand of Shelton’s credentials.
“I have never wrestled him before, and I have never seen him wrestle before because he’s on the west side of the state,” Tristan said. “My plan was mostly just to get to my tie-ups, get to my offense and do what I do best instead of waiting on what he can do.”
The match was tied at 3 after one period, and Tristan was able to take a 4-3 lead with an escape in the second. In the third period, Shelton chose down, and Tristan built an 8-4 lead thanks to a nearfall and a takedown. An escape and a stalling point put Shelton out of striking distance again, and he threw Tristan in a headlock as the clock was winding down. Tristan was able to get to his stomach, though, preventing the takedown or any back points.
“He has ice in his veins,” Tony Vance said. “He doesn’t have any doubt in himself, but he doesn’t show any emotion. He’s just calm and cool.”
After what could be his final competitive match – Tristan said he’s undecided about his future – he was congratulated by a host of spectators just off the mat, including his teammates and coaches from other schools.
Excited but sore, Tristan calmly walked through it all, not yet fully cognizant of the degree of his remarkable achievement.
“I had a lot of emotions through that time, and I wasn’t really thinking about (going through the injury) too much,” Tristan said. “I was just thinking about what had just happened. Now I’ve realized that I kind of accomplished a lot given my circumstances this year.”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Clio’s Tristan Vance works to maintain control in his opening match of the Division 2 Individual Finals against Lansing Waverly’s Demitrius Webb. (Middle) Clio coach – and Tristan’s father – Tony Vance celebrates as Tristan finishes a semifinal win over Fruitport’s Crue Cooper. (Click for more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)