The Bookworm: Four Days to Glory

Four Days to Glory by Mark Kreidler. 262 pages. Harper. 2007.

Wrestling, as Doug Streicher often says, is a motivate-yourself-any-way-you-can kind of a sport. They don’t stay up nights inventing cool new cheers for the wrestling team. It isn’t a lonely existence so much as a select one, and the wrestling coaches and parents and fans use that fact as a sort of proof of virtue: wrestlers are better than other athletes because their drive is so pure, because their pursuit is so solitary. So few people outside their closed circle of fellow wrestlers could ever even begin to understand the sacrifices they make in order to simply get on the mat, much less compete and win.

The day after Christmas has proven useful for purging myself of holiday treats, nursing a budding cold, and reading the final pages of Mark Kreidler’s Four Days to Glory, a book I bought at Iowa Book during my IC visit in May.

In 2005, two eastern Iowa high school wrestlers — Jay Borschel of Linn-Mar, and Dan LeClere of North Linn — were on the verge of becoming legends. Both three-time state champions, Borschel and LeClere were on a mission to finish their high school careers in the company of Iowa’s most elite prep wrestlers: the handful of “four-timers” who won four individual wrestling titles. Four Days not only chronicles the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of their senior years, it paints a vivid portrait of Iowa’s obsession with wrestling and the insane regiment of starvation and training wrestlers put themselves through.

Having grown up and been educated in Iowa, I know wrestling and have witnessed the mania and passion it generates. Though far from my favorite sport, I understand the basics and take great pride in it as Iowa’s unofficial state sport. I attended a handful of UI duals during Dan Gable’s epic reign. Two of my cousin’s wrestled for Dyersville Beckman under the tutelage of my uncle; I watched one compete at State in the Barn, which was, sadly, the only time I was ever in the old arena. (I remember the incline of the permanent seats being insanely steep.) On one special Saturday every February, my dad and I watched the title matches at State on IPTV.

Though its popularity was plain to see, I never understood its obsessive following. Two young men, dressed in nothing but form-fitting singlets, roll around on a mat and try their best to put the other on his back. Hmm… Of course it sounds gay, and questioning a wrestler’s sexuality was popular in high school, but the sport is loaded with machismo and testosterone; it is hailed as the ultimate mano a mano competition, and that I cannot deny. But I never knew what made people wrestle, and I hoped Four Days would enlighten me. It both did and did not.

(Here’s something I just realized: wrestling is a winter sport for short white guys who can’t ball.)

Every piece of journalist nonfiction about high school sports will forever be judged against Friday Night Lights. FNL was a phenomenal book, and though I knew Four Days could not live up to it, I was hoping it would at least be the FNL for high school wrestling. It both was and was not.

Though he did an excellent job of following Borschel and LeClere through their senior seasons, and recording the pertinent mini dramas on their respective teams, Kreidler served more as an observer than reporter. He did a lot more telling than showing, especially when it came to the wrestler’s inner struggles and satisfactions. However, that could have been by necessity: wrestlers are notorious for internalizing their emotions. They are also not known for being eloquent. Neither are football players, but somehow Buzz Bissinger got the Permian Panthers and their entire town to convey every inner most thought. Kreidler, I think, kept his distance, especially with Borschel; he chose to focus on LeClere, who belonged to a veritable wresting family. While Bissinger was an embedded part of Permian High’s football team, Kreidler sat in the stands, took notes, asked a couple questions, and filled in the blanks himself.

However, that, too, may have been borne out of necessity. Though there is a team aspect in wrestling, it is, for the most part, a sport of individual competition. Though Kreidler wrote a fair amount about the Linn-Mar and North Linn squads, his main focus was Borschel and LeClere.

Though an easy read, Four Days is rife with awkward syntax. Despite a number of bright spots, the book is poorly written and crafted. Kreidler did, however, do a nice job documenting the decline of the UI wrestling program after Gable’s retirement. Borschel, LeClere, and a number of other top-notch Iowa wrestlers — who many believed comprised the most talented crop the state has ever produced — committed to wrestle for Tom Brands, at former Hawkeye wrestler and assistant coach, at Virginia Tech. It shocked the state’s wrestling core, and Kreidler did an excellent job explaining what happened and outlining the crisis unfolding inside the UI wrestling room. Brands had lured away a group of kids who all dreamed of wearing the black and gold. Something was wrong. As it turned out, none of Brands’ star recruits ever wrestled as Hokies. A little over a year later, they would be heading back to Iowa with Brands, who was hired as the UI wrestling coach.

I am eager to put Four Days on my bookshelf, but I want to mention this one last thing.

Early in the book, Kreidler mentions how Borschel had distanced himself from his teammates and wrestling friends because they were not as dedicated as he is. However, he seemed to befriend and take under his wing a young freshman named Matt McDonough, who shared Borschel’s dedication and tenacity. The night after reading that part I was watching the replay of the Iowa State-Iowa dual on IPTV. Wrestling for Iowa at either 125 or 133 pounds was Matt McDonough, a redshirt sophomore from Linn-Mar. Weird.

New words I learned: All definitions courtesy of my MacBook dictionary. Tangential: the way it is used it means, “hardly touching a matter; peripheral.” Cauterize: “burn the skin or flesh of (a wound) with a heated instrument or caustic substance, typically to stop bleeding or prevent the wound from becoming infected.” Gall (used as a noun): “annoyance; irritation.” Invective: “insulting, abusive, or highly critical language.” Foist: “impose an unwelcome or unnecessary person or thing on.” Pratfall: “a fall onto one's buttocks,” or symbolically “a stupid and humiliating action.” Pantomime: “express or represent (something) by extravagant and exaggerated mime.” Rumpus room: “a room, typically in the basement of a house, used for games and recreation.”