PORT ANGELES — Bruce Baumgartner brought back a familiar message to the North Olympic Peninsula on Tuesday.
Speaking for the ninth year in a row at the Olympic Mountain Wrestling Camp at Port Angeles High School, the two-time Olympic gold medalist’s theme was simple:
“You can and will be successful if you put your mind to it,” said Baumgartner, the United States flag bearer in the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.
“You’re going to be the person who makes those decisions,” on whether or not you succeed.
The 50-year-old New Jersey native knows better than most.
His transformation from a lightly recruited prep athlete to a four-time Olympic medalist — no other U.S. wrestler has medaled in four separate Olympics — is based upon that premise.
“You need to expect to be successful,” Baumgartner told the dozens of campers gathered in the Port Angeles cafeteria Tuesday.
“You have to have that belief in yourself.”
A self-confessed underachiever in high school, Baumgartner credits two life-altering talks as critical to his development.
The first came from his father on the way to college at Indiana State University; the other from his coach, Fran McCann, at the four-year school in Terre Haute, Ind.
His father, a bus mechanic in Jersey, told Bruce that he could fail out of school, not make the ISU wrestling team and that would be fine as long as he tried.
Rather than be consoled by his father’s message, however, Baumgartner took it as a challenge.
“My dad had me failing out of school and not making the wrestling team,” Baumgartner said.
“I said, ‘I’m going to go out there and prove him wrong.’”
As all of Baumgartner’s accolades attest — including 17 freestyle wrestling national championships and one collegiate title — the super-heavyweight did more than that.
Baumgartner listed four keys to success during his half-hour talk.
Among them: set goals and set them high, surround yourself with good people, prepare yourself for success (mind and body) and, lastly, do your best.
“Be willing to overcome obstacles,” said Baumgartner, now athletic director at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania.
“Don’t let people talk you out of your goals.”
Baumgartner also preached the importance of being willing to focus completely on the task at hand — be it in the classroom, on the mat or at your job.
That was something McCann, his college coach, had stressed to him during the other influential talk in Baumgartner’s life.
And it was a timely message given the daily struggles coaches face at the high school level, according to Roughrider wrestling coach Erik Gonzalez.
“It’s just harder and harder to get kids to focus and be the best they can be,” said Gonzalez, organizer of the Olympic Mountain Wrestling camp during its nine-year run in the area.
“There are so many other distractions now.”
Gonzalez had approximately 70 athletes come out for his four-day camp in Port Angeles this week.
While that number approaches some of the better-attended Olympic Mountain Wrestling camps of years past, it’s more of an aberration this summer, the coach said.
“Wrestling camps are way down,” Gonzalez said. “Bruce, his own camp back at Edinboro, was down about 100 kids this year.
“The team camp that we went to [earlier this summer] was down about 100 kids this year.
“It went from 26 teams last year to 16 teams this year. Everybody’s numbers are down right now.”
Added Gonzalez, “I think the economy is hurting kids a lot, and I also think it’s getting harder and harder to get kids to commit to want to do stuff.
“Even me, I have nine kids, my own kids, PA kids, that aren’t here, that I expected to be here.”
It’s an odd balance that at a time when more and more offseason activities are available to athletes, Gonzalez said, that coaches are having a harder time getting them more involved.
“The elite athletes and the ones who want to be elite athletes, the opportunities are there that weren’t there in years past,” Gonzalez said.
“You can see kids be even more successful. The long-term commitment is the hard part.”