Grewe reaches 100 match milestone
By Ross Pattermann
Carter Grewe is quiet as he prepares for his match. He paces back and forth, alone in his thoughts, sparing a quick glance at the clock or an ongoing match. He shakes out his arms and bounces lightly on his toes, and goes back to pacing back and forth.
Watching his pre-match routine is akin to watching an animal in a cage. He moves with the restless, coiled energy of a caged tiger, and like a tiger, he can’t wait to pounce when the moment comes.
When his name is called, he charges towards the mat, but his face is stoic, betraying no emotion. Grewe has a job to do, and he wants to get it done as fast as possible. The quicker he pins his opponent, the better the message he sends to his rivals.
“I’m pretty much hyper-focused on each match,” Grewe says about his mentality. “I’m going to do whatever I can to score points and win matches. It’s pretty simple. You don’t need to overcomplicate it; you just go out there and wrestle.”
This year he’s been getting the job done in record fashion, pinning ranked and unranked opponents in stunningly swift fashion.
He approaches each match the same, but his match with Thorp’s Wyatt Wulf was different from the others. His pin came quickly enough, but the victory resulted in his 100 match win.
And when the match is won, Grewe turned towards the packed crowd in Abbotsford. He located his family shared a brief smile and thumbs up, and then went back to his pacing, silently counting the minutes until his next opponent.
The win was nice, but it was just business as usual.
Don’t be fooled though. That stoic, business- like approach hides a mountain of emotion. Grewe, a senior at Colby High, says his passion for the sport is at an alltime high, and he’s never more alive or more at home than when he’s on the mat.
“Everybody has something they love, and what I love is wrestling,” Grewe says. “I live for the sport. I would wrestle all day long if I could. I’d do it start to finish and be totally happy about it.”
It wasn’t always that way Grewe’s relationship with his sport has evolved just as he has. He says now that he’s a senior, and been through the highs and lows of competition, his attitude towards wrestiing is different now.
“I never loved wrestling as much as I do now,” Grewe admits. “It’s almost a newfound passion for me. I think wrestling was maybe harder back then because I did not have the same kind of passion that I do now.”
Grewe says the difference has been in his focus and preparation.
“I didn’t go into every practice thinking ‘I want to be a state champ, I want to be a national champion, I want to wrestle division one in college and I want to be a D1 national champion.' I didn’t have that purpose behind every single practice. I developed a lot more mental toughness compared to last year.”
Grewe has found that passion at the perfect time, and despite late starts, injuries and even a global pandemic, he accomplished that rare feat of 100 wins.
“Triple digits is bigger than two,” Grewe said. “It’s obviously pretty cool, and you don’t see it happen very often. I hope to carry on the momentum.”
Grewe saw River Halopka and Logan Ruesch accomplish the feat, and he knew he could do it. That path hit a hurdle when COVID-19 broke out across the globe in 2020, and his junior campaign resulted in just six total matches.
Grewe knew he would have at least one more year, and so he set to work with a will. That meant grueling training sessions with elite wrestlers at Jordan Crass’s Crass-Trained wrestling academy. It meant long hours spent in the gym, training, and a careful and calculated approach to nutrition.
“It keeps me in great physical shape, and it’s another piece of the puzzle. The puzzle isn’t complete without time in the gym. If one piece is missing, it’s not going to work. Everything works together, those extra practices, the gym, running, stretching, yoga. It all works together.”
For some, careful attention to diet and
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A MAGNIFICENT MILESTONE - Colby High senior Carter Grewe, far right, poses with his football teammates, left to right, Brekyn Lieders, Isaac Raatz and Tristen Stange, who were in Abbotsford on Thursday to cheer on Grewe as he posted his 100th victory of his varsity career with a pin of Thorp’s Wyatt Wulf. Grewe, a state qualifier his sophomore year, is pleased with the milestone, but wants to use it to springboard him into even greater feats - a state title, and one day a national championship. staffphotos/ross pattermann
STALKING HIS PREY - Carter Grewe looks for an opening against Thorp’s Wyatt Wulf on Thursday. Grewe pinned Wulf in the first period for his 100th match win of his prep career. A nationally ranked wrestler, Grewe hopes to win a state title this year and wrestle in the NCAA next year.
QUICK CELEBRATION - Carter Grewe gives a quick thumbs up to the crowd after picking up 100 wins. fitness quickly grows stale, and travelling in the offseason to compete in tournaments might lose its luster to others, but Grewe does all of this with a purpose.
He knows every workout, every match, even every healthy meal, makes him a better wrestler. He says being a champion is just as much about attitude and action as it is about the results.
”My dad’s a big Michael Jordan fan. We watched “The Last Dance” like 25 times. We were watching all that stuff, and just watching MJ’s mentality, I thought ‘This is what the best guys are doing. I’m going to try to replicate it.’” It helps that Grewe has been wrestling for years, and enjoyed an excellent junior career, earning All-American honors. He says those early matches prepared for even bigger stages.
“It taught me how to win big matches on big stages. Some people live in small towns and they never get to wrestle guys from the East or West Coast. It opened my eyes at an early age, and showed me what good wrestling looks like.”
Once Grewe reached high school, he came running out of the gates at one hundred miles per hour, racking up a 37-6 record. His sophomore saw him battle a nagging injury from the football season, but he still posted a 29-8 record and reached the state tournament.
Grewe’s junior year was a tale of what might have been. With the cornonavirus putting everything, including a high contact sport like wrestling, on hold, Grewe only had six matches, going 4-2 on the year. It was disappointing, but Grewe has learned to handle the ups and downs of life thanks to his wrestling background.
Grewe spent his junior year honing his technique at Jordan Crass’s elite wrestling academy in Eau Claire, and also got into peak physical shape. The man who is nicknamed “Vanilla Gorilla” says he’s never been in better shape, or more committed to the sport.
“I know when I step on a mat I’m more conditioned than almost any other wrestler. It gives me confidence to keep going, and I know if my lungs are burning and my muscles are sore, the other guy is probably feeling twice as bad as me.”
Grewe has reached a big milestone in his career with his one hundred match win, and while he acknowledges it, he says it’s just part of something bigger.
“My ultimate goal is to be a national champion,” Grewe says. “A hundred wins is cool, and I don’t take that for granted, but it’s just another step. I’m not going to smile until it’s over.
100 wins is a goal that I can check off. It’s a small step, but you have to take small steps to get the journey done. It took me 100 wins to get to where I am now. I got a lot more to go.”
