Jeff Chaney
Sports Scene
CHATTANOOGA, TENN. – As Gabe Dean walked off the mat on January 2 after securing one of the biggest upsets in recent NCAA wrestling history, his coach, Damion Hahn, turned to the talented freshman and said “Sure you’re not a football player?”
It was a strange question to pose to the Cornell University wrestler who had just beaten two-time defending national champion Ed Ruth of Penn State University 7-4 in the 184-pound final of the Southern Scuffle at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, but it’s one asked after all the matches so far in Dean’s young collegiate wrestling career.
Ruth came into the match riding an 84-match winning streak, but it was a fair question to ask of Dean, considering that he came out of Lowell High School with a much more impressive football resume than a wrestling resume.
After all, Dean was a two-time all state quarterback, who led the Red Arrows to three state finals, one of which culminated with a championship.
He scored over 60 touchdowns in his three years as signal caller for Lowell and was named the AP Player of the Year in Division 1-2 after his junior season.
On the mat, Dean had a good high school career, winning a state title as a junior and finishing runner-up as a senior, but he wasn’t considered one of the top recruits in the nation.
So coming out of high school, Dean made a huge decision and chose wrestling at Cornell, a top 10 Division I program, over football. He questioned that decision during his first year in Ithaca, NY, where he wrestled as an unattached wrestler for the Finger Lakes Wrestling Club.
“My first Open last year, I was so nervous because it was my first college tournament, and I went 0-2 at the Buffalo Open, which isn’t the biggest tournament, but still a college tournament, and they were tough kids I wrestled, but I went 0-2,” Dean said “I remember calling my dad [Lowell wrestling coach Dave Dean] on the ride home and saying, ‘Dad, wrestling isn’t for me, I’m going to play football here at Cornell.’ He said, ‘You are just emotional, give it one more week, and if you still hate it, we’ll talk.’ I just said, ‘OK, but I’m just not a wrestler.’
“My coaches caught on to that story, so every time I come off the mat, Damion Hahn pats me on the back and says, ‘Sure you’re not a football player?’ I’m glad I stuck with it.”
So is Hahn.
“I think he was a top 100 recruit in wrestling, but not a highly-recruited wrestler,” Hahn said. “We weren’t sure of his plans; we thought he would play football. But his dad said he was going to wrestle, and we said, Let’s make this happen.’ ”
It started happening last year when former national champion Cornell wrestler and fellow state of Michigan athlete Cam Simaz coached Dean after he deferred his first year at Cornell and wrestled for the Finger Lakes Wrestling Club.
It’s continued this year with Hahn and the rest of the Cornell coaching staff.
“He has all the intangibles to do great things,” Hahn said. “Is he going to win it all? I won’t say yet. But he has one of the main things, and that is work ethic — that never-say-die attitude that is hard to teach. The technique is easy to teach, it’s that will to improve and win that is hard to teach, and he has that part taken care of.”
But that will wasn’t always there in full force.
As a freshman at Lowell, Dean was stalled out in a key match against Tyler Fuller of Greenville, one of Lowell’s main rivals.
It was a loss that cost the Red Arrows, and one Dean said was a turning point, not only in his wrestling career, but in his athletic career.
“I think every great competitor needs to get embarrassed in their lives,” Dean said. “Then they can either hang their head and don’t learn anything from it, or they go, ‘All right, I have to fix some things and get better.’ And I think that was exactly what that was.”
Dean had a similar experience earlier this year when Ruth pinned him at the Binghampton Invitational in early November for one of two losses he has sustained this year.
In an interview the day after Christmas, a week before the Southern Scuffle, Dean, who was ranked sixth at 184 pounds at the time, examined that loss.
“He caught me in that cross-face cradle and pinned me,” Dean said. “I learned in that match you can’t put your weight forward on bottom, because he has those freakishly long arms. And once that is locked up, it is pretty hard to get out. So I learned a lot from that match, just to get a feel what kind of wrestler he is, which is great for me, because hopefully I will have another opportunity to wrestle him at the Scuffle.”
Hahn, Simaz, and many Big Red fans are anxious to see what lies in store for Dean.
“I’m exited to see what happens the next four years,” Hahn said. “Where he is right now is far beyond where a freshman is, as far as control with nerves. That has a lot to do with his background. Two of the most stressful positions in sports are major league closing pitcher and quarterback, and him being a great quarterback in high school, and being the high-stress spots he played in, those have helped him.
“He just went out and beat one of the most dominating wrestlers in years,” he added. “He put a great match together and beat arguably the best pound-for-pound wrestler in the country.”
Simaz added, “Gabe is a machine. He outworks everybody. He is only a freshman, and he will get a lot better. I’m very proud of him, but that’s only the Southern Scuffle, and he still has work ahead of him.”
Dean welcomes the work he gets at Cornell room with the likes of Hahn, Simaz, and four-time champion Kyle Dake.
“My goal is to never stop improving,” Dean said. “There are so many things I can do better in a lot of my matches.”
For one night in Tennessee, though, there wasn’t much that he could have done better.