Winners never quit and quitters never win. That’s the old adage, anyway. But sometimes, just sometimes, they do both.
Andrew Schlaffer, a sophomore 149-pounder on the Terrapin wrestling team, is one of those exceptions. Just two years after quitting the team midway through his freshman year, Schlaffer is a champion.
His 10-4 victory over Virginia’s Drew Dipasquale in the ACC Championship more than two weeks ago not only qualified him for the NCAA National Tournament – beginning today in Oklahoma City – but also gave him a personal victory of epic proportions.
“When you’re 9 years old, your goal is to make it to nationals. This is the biggest stage you can possibly be on,” Schlaffer said. “Looking back on the whole process, I’m just amazed at my turnaround.”
To represent a team he recently quit may come as a bit ironic, but looking at his track record, one might see Schlaffer’s rebound was an inevitable part of his make-up.
The Parkville native has made a career at defying adversity. When one of his biggest friends and fans, grandfather Charles Schlaffer, passed away before his senior season at Dulaney High School, Andrew dedicated the season to him and went out and won the 135-pound state title.
But perhaps his biggest challenge came when he became a Terp. Already grappling with bouts of homesickness his freshman year, he was bitten by injury in mid-October with a high-ankle sprain.
The injury took him out of contention for the starting 133-pound spot and put him on the shelf for two and a half months. To make matters worse, the Terp program was in the middle of a transitional period at the time, with current head coach Pat Santoro having just arrived. Santoro said he only got to see Schlaffer compete for about a week before the injury, and thus knew little about him.
“To Santoro, I was just the kid who was injured,” Schlaffer said. “I didn’t feel like I was connected to the team, and I was just pretty burnt out with wrestling. I didn’t know whether I wanted to get caught up in wrestling or in just being a normal kid.”
A week before winter break, Schlaffer met with Santoro and explained his feelings. Santoro gave him two weeks to go home over break and think about it, and the verdict came back that Schlaffer was done.
“Wrestling’s one of those sports where you’re either going 100 percent or just going along and not improving,” Schlaffer said. “I couldn’t be in the middle.”
So for an entire second semester, Schlaffer lived a life of schoolwork, partying and plenty of free time. Meanwhile, he watched his roommate, Jeff Oldham, working his butt off to try and win a spot in the lineup at 125 pounds. Oldham said it was an “emotional time.”
“[Not wrestling] ended up eating me up,” Schlaffer said. “I hadn’t quit anything before, and I had been wrestling since I was 9. Not having that competition was like a huge void and nothing could fill it.”
Realizing that returning to the team was his only salvation, Schlaffer worked out like a madman over the summer in Baltimore-area gyms, grew an inch and put on roughly 10 pounds. He came back for tryouts in the fall in top condition, the only way he saw to break his “quitter” label.
“He surprised us,” Santoro said. “We were like, ‘Wow!’ Usually kids that quit and try to come back, they come back out of shape and last a month. He’s a different category of person.”
Schlaffer made the team, and his increased size had him competing with Charlie Pinto for the 141-pound spot. Pinto won the battle, going on to win the ACC title. But watching Pinto excel in such a way only added to Schlaffer’s motivation.
A year and eight pounds later, Schlaffer has replicated the feat in the 149-pound class. He went 24-12 (4-1 ACC) during the regular season, edged North Carolina’s Chris Ramos 3-2 in the ACC semifinals and cruised to the championship over Dipasquale.
In today’s national competition, Schlaffer drew a pairing with No. 2 Tyler Eustice, the Big Ten champ out of Iowa. Though he is unseeded, to call his chances slim would be to disregard his history of defying odds.
But even if this is the end of the road for Schlaffer, his journey thus far has been more than worthwhile. He has became a champion, and more importantly, he has shown that you don’t have to give up, even after you’ve quit.
Contact reporter Jason Fraley at fraleydbk@gmail.com.
