The Fargo Nationals, in either age division, is the most grueling and challenging presentation of wrestling in the country. In Greco-Roman, even more so. And for a full-time devotee to the classical style of wrestling, like Will Scherer (77 kg, Combat WC), it can be, and often is, an experience replete with frustration. Because although one might presume that a wrestler who does little else other than focus on Greco-Roman technique and competitive tactics should have the advantage over his moonlighting brethren, the sport is expressed rather differently in the Fargodome.
Greco-Roman wrestling in Fargo is effectively its own customized style. Yes, bouts are officiated according to United World Wrestling’s rulebook for Greco, but how said rules are observed tends to deviate wildly depending on the officials. In-match governance is perhaps more impactful in Greco-Roman than in any other discipline and just one call, or missed call, can disrupt the entire flow of a contest (if not directly alter the outcome entirely). In addition, brackets are mainly filled with superbly-talented folkstylers — many of whom will go on to compete for reputable colleges — whose abilities are indeed transferrable to the dynamics Greco has to offer. These athletes can drive a hard pace that is outside the norm, or they may sit back and display characteristics of passivity which, in this particular tournament, are not beholden to consequence.
In other words, “Fargo Greco” is its own thing — so much so that, these days, whenever a hardened age-grouper ala Scherer manages to summit the peak, it is actually construed as a more impressive achievement. This doesn’t have to make sense. The manner in which Greco-Roman wrestling is competed, developed, and cultivated within this country’s borders rarely ever does.
Yet, Scherer survived, and thrived, through the very same gauntlet that had tripped up so many who had come before him. He had three runaway wins, a couple of tighter ones, and emerged victorious after a finals match, against talented JayDen Williams, thanks to a combination of skill, mental toughness, and competitive maturity normally reserved for older athletes who are well-accustomed to bright lights and high public interest. To Scherer, it was all merely an exercise in compartmentalization. He was operating confidently based on what he knew about himself, the circumstances, and how his ability to actually just wrestle could negate any and all adversity that is common to competitors in such an intense environment.
People love to drone on and on about how it is prudent to “control only what you can control”, but such a mantra is often relegated to uselessness once feelings of stress are introduced. It is one thing to propagate the worthiness of remaining calm, cool, and collected. Quite another it is to expound upon these virtues whilst amid a swirling storm. This is where Scherer stands apart. Perhaps due in large part to the fact that the vast majority of his competitive upbringing at this stage has been absorbed overseas — where the opponents are, to put it succinctly, simply better, and fan support is non-existent — Scherer had no issue keeping his wits about him as he stared down a string of capable antagonists in the Junior Nationals. He focused on each phase of each match as if it appeared in complete isolation.
Scherer says below that he wrestles only in 15-second blocks. This means that he does not think too far ahead. Because he doesn’t think too far ahead, he likewise doesn’t get into his own head. And because he doesn’t get into his own head, he doesn’t have to contend with the sort of hypothetical worries which plague most wrestlers when the scoreboard suggests that worrying is a good idea. At most, Scherer replaces anxiety with urgency. He just does so without marrying an emotional windfall to whatever the scenario happens to be.
This is why he was able to execute a match-winning headlock in his first major domestic final. There was but a little over a minute left in the bout when Scherer, down 5-1, swam into position and yanked Williams to the mat. Yeah, he celebrated once the whistle blew, though not before attempting to congratulate his opponent. Scherer then let out a roar. Nothing crazy. Not over-the-top, aside from Missouri coach Brian Graham ceremonially tossing him. But, other than that, there was not a long cascade of gestures or “look at me, look at me!” type of showmanship. It was all just enough. An appropriate release which signified a job well-done and another step taken towards an eventual Senior career that he hopes, and expects, to include many other marquee triumphs.
As Scherer now begins to prepare for his first semester at Northern Michigan University, he discussed his recent win at the Fargo Junior Nationals and the mentality powering his approach.
Will Scherer — 77 kg, NMU/NTS
5PM: You had obviously wrestled in Fargo previously and understood the landscape. What it is like approaching this tournament as someone who has gained the majority of their experience from wrestling overseas?
Will Scherer: I would say don’t expect it to be like your foreign competition. Your foreign competition is going to wrestle very structurally and not do many things outside the box. They are going to have their legs coming forward at you more, not their head and their hands. So just knowing that it’s not going to be the same, but don’t see that as a bad thing. See it as an opportunity to really expose folkstyle guys and how they wrestle Greco. You have to know that coming in and not really wrestle like you’re wrestling a World Champion. You have to wrestle some of these guys and make the adjustment like you’re wrestling someone who has nothing to lose, is wrestling kind of folkstylie, and also kind of blocky. You have to be super-violent to get some of these guys to loosen up.
With the foreigners, they have their own flow and you can actually wrestle with them. You can’t wrestle with some of these folkstyle guys because they are squirrely and out of position. So, you have to be physically violent to get them to play the game with you. You can’t think that because you’re a Greco-Roman wrestler that you have it in the bag. You have to be excited and intentional to wrestle every match, even if this is the tournament you didn’t want to go to. I mean, I wanted win the World Team Trials and go and represent the country. It stunk, I didn’t do it, but then I got the next best thing and won Fargo. Now I get to go to the Olympic Training Center, train with those guys, and hopefully they will represent our country well enough to bring home a medal, maybe gold.
5PM: How do you deal with the frustration with how some matches are called domestically, especially when it comes to passivity, referring in part to the circumstances from Fargo?
WS: You laugh, for one. You laugh in your head a little bit when they make a dumb call. But you wrestle according to the situation, and I call it a situation, the situation they put you in — such as if they’re putting you down and there’s no reason you should be put down. That’s a situation, and it’s okay. You just take a deep breath (mimics breathing in and out), make sure your par terre defense is ready, and wrestle. You wrestle, but not the whole match. You wrestle every 15 seconds. Do the best you can for every 15-second chapter of the match. If you’re trying to wrestle three minutes ahead, you’re wrong. And a lot of that is, if a bad call happens to you or something goes wrong, not thinking, Oh man, I have to do all of this in four minutes. No, you just have to win the next 15 seconds. So when you get thrown and you’re down 5-1 in the Fargo finals and you’re like, Oh, gosh, you get right back in that position again because it is the position that he gives you and you can’t be picky when you’re losing. And you throw him right back again, and then you win every 15-second hand-fight. Go till the minute, and you win. You win the title. Now, if you’re just going to fold because something bad happens to you, you are not going to last long in this sport.
You know, there have been plenty of calls that have gone my way this year or they have gone the other person’s way. And you just have to go, No way that just happened, and then just keep wrestling. The match needs to be 0-0 emotionally. Even when I’m winning, I still know I have to put work in. I’m not trying to coast. If I’m up by criteria and I have a minute left? I’m telling myself, You have a minute to show everyone in this arena that you’re hand-fighting is better. You don’t need to score points, but you have to show that your hand-fighting is better so they can’t call you for fleeing or passivity. In the semis, same thing: You have two minutes to show everyone why your hand-fighting is better than this guy’s and why he shouldn’t even be on the mat with you.
In any match, bad things might happen. You’ll get put down when you shouldn’t. But if you go, Man, I just got put down, now you’re more likely to get turned. You are more likely to get turned, to get thrown, to get highlight-reeled, and to get confused about the situation because now your brain is working on overload because it also has to process emotions for you during the match. Instead, you should almost be like a robot in the sense that if something bad happens to you, you’re like, Great, what’s the next position? If something good happens to you? Great, what’s the next position? What’s the next situation?
If you are getting into your head about things, then wrestling isn’t fun. And we do this because it’s fun. I don’t do this because I just want to win. I do it because I love this sport, and part of loving the sport is loving it even when you’re losing. Loving it when you are down on points and thinking, I get to throw this guy for four after he just four’ed me. There is no better feeling than that so, when you are losing, love the moments when you’re losing. If you can outwork that situation and make something happen, not only are you going to remember it for the rest of your life, but other people are going to remember it for the rest of their lives, as well.
That’s why Greco is entertaining. You could be down by four and then boom, four-point move, and now the guy has to scramble and try to get another score of his own. So never get emotional over a call, even if that call puts you down by four or six points. Just breathe, and then it’s like, I’m down by six points and and I’m going to have to wrestle really hard. Let’s go. Then wrestling becomes easy. Now if you’re losing and you are thinking, Man, I’m losing, I need to go for this, then I have to do all of this, and he’s running away from me and I have to catch him? You’re becoming too emotional and it is making you tired. You are getting tired because you’re being so frantic. You need to pull up your big-boy pants and go take it to the guy and wrestle hard. You being down on points has nothing to do with the effort you can give over the next two minutes.
5PM: The majority of your matches in Fargo were one-sided affairs.
WS: Yeah.
5PM: Once you get to the later rounds it starts getting tighter.
WS: But that’s because you make them tighter.
5PM: Do you look at each round of a tournament the same?
Will Scherer: I would say ‘no’ because all I have to do is focus on my own performance, and if I’ve studied the wrestler, I can already kind of know what kind of a match it can be and how I have to wrestle and be smart. But it doesn’t matter if I pull Sullivan Ramos in the first round or the semis or the finals. I was going to wrestle him the same way just because I knew the type of wrestler he was and how big he was. So I would say ‘no’ because I will focus more on the performance and how I can perform my best against a guy. It’s not so much, Oh, we’re in the finals, so now it’s going to be tougher’ or, ‘Oh, it’s the semis, so it is going to be tougher. I focus on my energy level, my performance, and my excitement. The only thing about the later matches is that you’re already tired, so you put more of an emphasis on eating a couple of pretzels and having some honey. Getting some electrolytes back in, doing all of those things so that you’re not exhausted. Plus, you are burning fuel while you’re wrestling, anyway. You put that fuel back in so that you can wrestle and perform well in the quarters, semis, and so on.
The only thing I did differently going into the finals is shower because we had a big break. Funny enough, it was because my mom who flagged down a Wisconsin mom and asked if we could shower in their room. They were like, Sure, we’ll just text you when our guy is done showering and then you can come up and shower. Their guy was Hunter Vander Heiden, who actually won at 285. His family was nothing but helpful to us. It says a lot about their character, helping a Missouri guy out. I know that I’m kind of from Wisconsin because I’ve trained there for the past four years, and I sort of knew Hunter, at least enough to where he knows that I’ve trained in Wisconsin. But — I didn’t even know that it was his hotel room until after the finals, so that was really nice.
After showering, I went back to my room and chilled with my headphones on, listening to some songs and videos to get me excited to wrestle. Then I got dressed and went back to the arena. I texted Aidan Squier, who placed 3rd, to warm-up at 5:20pm. Boom, he was there. We got a quick warm-up in and, boom, it’s time to start. The other thing that made the finals different was the championship parade and the light show they do. It’s just noise. It doesn’t help you win or lose the wrestling match unless you let it.
Those were really the only things. I didn’t approach any match differently in a performance sense. I didn’t get any tighter, I got better. As the day went along, I was willing to give more of myself to the match. In the semis, I put everything into that one and was exhausted afterwards. In the finals, I put everything I had into that one and was exhausted afterwards. I wasn’t exhausted after the other ones, but those matches didn’t go the full six minutes; but, even after the finals, I felt like I could have wrestled another two matches. But I did not look at any match differently from a performance standpoint. Like with the finals, I did not want to even give it a name, or title. Like, This is the championship. I did not even want to do that because then it is made into this big situation. The best way to perform and succeed is to just trick the brain and be like, It’s really not that big of a deal, it’s just practice and we’ve got to do it, and we’ve got to do it right, and perform hard. But don’t make the moment more than it is. You can almost downplay the moment if you’re mature enough. You still want it, but just focus on performing as opposed to winning or losing because focusing on the outcomes can put stress and anxiety into it, which makes you tighten up in big moments.
5PM: Speaking of big moments, walk through the final since that was an entertaining match.
WS: It was fun. It was a blast. I had such a fun time wrestling that match.
5PM: Well, what was it like having that kind of match in those circumstances and what was going through your mind?
WS: What was going through my mind is that they retired a referee right before my match, so I had to wait even longer. I was like, That’s kind of hilarious, right before my Fargo finals they are retiring a referee. But just walking down there, it was kind of cool. And then stomping on the mat to bring me back into reality that it was just a light show. It was still just a mat. I high-fived my corner coaches Brian Graham and Jacob Beck, and then it was just about performing. I had noticed that he (JayDen Williams) was stressed-out in the hallway. I was singing “American Pie” out-loud and clapping. I wanted him to hear me because I wanted him to know how loose I was in the moment, and how un-phased I was by it. He was just pacing hard, back-and-forth, and I think getting into his own head, doing these little antics. I was just telling myself, This is just practice, it’s just a reward for all of the 12-mile runs Lucas (Steldt) put you through… All of the squatting till failure, all of the cleans… This is the reward, so enjoy it. Don’t be afraid of the situation, be happy you’re in this situation. When it became that, it was just fun. And when he grabbed me, I was like, Okay, I’m going to have to work really hard because this guy is really strong. Then I got my first par terre and tried to go for my lift. I think that if it were anyone lighter, I would have gotten it. He was too strong, too tall, too heavy, and I missed my opportunity. I was fine with it because I didn’t want to get reversed in par terre. I didn’t need to force anything.
Then they put me down in par terre and I defended everything. I was trying to go for a pinch headlock and he caught me. I was like, Alright, we’ve got some more work to do. And then I went right back into that position because I was thinking that he was really tired and probably wanted a tech fall to end it. I went right to it, he was whizzering down a little bit, raised my elbow, he’s whizzering down on it a little bit, raised my elbow, and then I felt my opportunity. It was like, Okay, now or never… I’d rather go for a throw and get pinned than lose 5-1 and wonder what would have happened if I had tried to throw. Then I felt him locking. You never lock second, and he locked second, and you can see my brain go ‘Bam!’, and then I went to the back-step and went to throw. I wasn’t chilling there. I was doing everything intentionally with all of my movements to set up the throw. Then it was, All I have to do is win the hand-fight against this guy for a minute? I’ve had to hand-fight against Randon Miranda, Aidan Squier… I mean, Randon Miranda has beaten me up in practice at the OTC, and now you’re telling me that I have to hand-fight this guy, who isn’t Randon Miranda or anyone like him? All I have to do is win the hand-fight against this guy for a minute and I win Fargo? The match was over the second I got the throw. Now, people didn’t know that, but I knew it. For me, it was, You’re telling me that all I have to do is win the hand-fight and win the center of the mat against this guy for a minute? Yeah, I’m going to do it. That’s like me giving you a five-dollar bill and you give me back a twenty. I took that deal.
Then it became just about performing and trying not to coast. I didn’t want to coast. I wanted to be dominant through the end of the match in the hand-fight and finish the tournament off strong. Because — it was just practice, but I had to do it right. Lucas has gotten mad at us even when we’ve won matches because we had done it the wrong way. Such as scoring a lot in the first period and then coasting. Like not even hand-fighting well in the second period. If we’re just coasting, he gets mad. So I knew that all I had to do was hand-fight as hard as possible and I’d win the match. I’ve had to hand-fight with Otto Black, Amryn Nutter, Benji Peak, Payton Jacobson, Alston Nutter… Benji has exposed me in practice, just make me look completely stupid. Otto Black, I have to watch out for his ducks and everything. Amryn, I have to watch out for his violence. Heck, Max Black, I had to deal with his hand-fighting and he’s no easy out. He’s a hard guy to hand-fight with. Parker Betts, sometimes I try to hand-fight with him and he just beats me up every time I go in the room. That’s why it was, All I have to do is hand-fight with this guy? This is going to be fun. This is going to be easy. I knew that if I put everything into that last minute, the match was mine. And I won, so it was cool.
Then I shook the Marine’s hand and told him that my brother is a Marine. He gave me a challenge coin that says, “The spirit to win”. He told me, “From your brother and the rest of us Marines, we give you this challenge coin.” We took the rest of the pictures, went downstairs. I saw Lucas and gave him a big hug because you don’t know how much time that guy has put into me. Time away from his family… That guy has sacrificed a lot and I was not good when I first came to that club. He put so much work into me that to win at Fargo and show everyone how this is the way you should do it, and how Lucas is doing things the right way, meant a lot to me. So that was great.
It was also great to win for Team Missouri. Missouri hadn’t had a Junior Greco champ since Jack Darrah a few years ago. I think. I’m not sure, I’ll check, but to also win it for all of the other coaches who were watching me compete the whole weekend, especially coaches Mike Tuck and Reggie Burris, who set all of this up for Team Missouri to make competing a possibility. It was just an accumulation of all these things, plus representing Combat at a high level. And, honestly, winning one for the Greco guys. I’ve seen too many Greco guys not perform as well in this tournament because they try to wrestle pure Greco. You have to know that it’s not pure Greco, and that you’re going to have to make adjustments against folkstyle guys, and for when calls aren’t made in the right way. They are almost making accommodations to the freestyle and folkstyle guys because they’re like, Well, they’re trying… Yeah, but they aren’t doing things the right way. It was just keeping my head level with all of that. It was just great to bring one home for the Greco guys, for Northern Michigan, for Combat, Team Missouri. It was an honor for me to do that and I was very happy to do so.
5PM: How are you parlaying all of this into the remainder of the summer?
WS: It was a cool moment, and that’s great, but now I want to train harder. I feel like there is more within my reach and that I have become better as a competitor and not just as a wrestler over this past year. Competitively, I am a lot more violent. I’m going to do everything in my power to perform, right? Through the rest of this summer I’m going to the Olympic Training Center to help get Leister Bowling and Joel Adams ready for the U20 Worlds. I’ll see Coach (Scott) Honecker, Cheney (Haight), and those guys. That’ll be fun. I will still be training hard, so it’s not crazy that I jumped at that opportunity. I was like, You’re saying that I get to train another week with guys who are really good and then go to Northern Michigan two weeks later? I’m jumping on that opportunity everyday. Hopefully, I’ll see some Senior guys out there and thank them, because some of them have poured a lot of time into me, be it with wrestling or mindset.
I watch a lot of guys’ interviews and seeing how they attack wrestling has helped me attack wrestling in a healthier way, and faster. I haven’t had to get dinged up on my own journey as much because I’ve had guys come before me. I had the same thing with my older brother. He had to go through things earlier, then I would see where he might have messed up and think, I’m not going to go through that. And that has helped me a lot, having a brother who was the blueprint for how to be a decent human being. I’ve had too many people pour into me to not take these opportunities and make the most of them. The rest of this summer is going to be great. I’ll either be weight-training, wrestling, or focusing on things that will help me become a better wrestler and person. Even having this interview with you right now is challenging me intellectually and putting me in a good head space for college, so I appreciate it.
5PM: That was going to be my last question. Lucas has built a pipeline to Northern Michigan. What are you looking forward to the most about being part of that program?
Will Scherer: I would probably just say working hard. If you work hard, they’ll love you. Or at least the right guys will. If you find yourself around the right people, you will be working hard and doing the right things. They have a really good business program and other things there, which I’m excited about. I’m going to pursue a degree in entrepreneurship. Also, doing in-person school. I’ve done online schooling for the past four years to make this dream a possibility while training with Lucas and all of that, so I’m ready to take some in-person classes and ball out in the classroom. That’s a big thing for me. And to just socialize with people. The more I socialize with people, the more experiences I have to compare to other ones so that I can make the best decisions going forward with my wrestling career and life.
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