BLOOMINGTON — Blood, sweat and victories.
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Marmion senior AJ Jaffe built a career covered in all three, and now the 138-pound state champion can finally start counting his totals.
Well, maybe not the blood or sweat.
“Extra workouts, pushing each other to breaking points, throwing up,” Jaffe said of Marmion’s fierce practice room. “I don’t know how many pounds of blood have been shed in that room, but it’s a lot.”
It’s a finite number. The Harvard recruit capped his career Saturday at the dual team state tournament. Jaffe went 3-0, helping the Cadets match their best finish at U.S. Cellular Coliseum.
It came despite the state’s toughest road. Marmion dismissed two programs in IntermatWrestling.com’s national rankings — No. 17 Sandburg at sectionals, No. 40 Montini in the quarterfinals — before a 49-17 romp against Providence sent the Cadets to the Class 3A finals.
There, No. 16 Marmion fell 33-24 to No. 8 Oak Park-River Forest, now the three-time defending state champions.
“I feel the state of Illinois is sometimes like, ‘Let’s make it hard on Marmion,'” Jaffe joked. “The road we had was a tough one. We battled, we just fell a little short. But I’m proud of the way the guys fought. It’s been unbelievable.
“We’ve worked so hard together, and that just made us so much closer in the end.”
Jaffe (47-6) noted that Marmion’s rise to prominence didn’t happen overnight. It took a special group of hard-nosed seniors to create a consensus top-20 team in the nation.
It’s not often a star-studded roster aligns.
Trace Carello (40-8) is headed to Air Force, Michael Callahan (14-2) to Duke and two-time state champion Nathan Traxler (49-2) to Stanford. That’s not to mention Princeton-bound Riley DeMoss, a 2015 state champion who missed most of the season with an injury.
“We’ve actually been together since we were 8, since little kid’s club,” said Traxler, who used a midseason loss to Jake Warner, Washington’s 2A state champ, to fuel an unstoppable run down the stretch. “We’ve grown together, matured together.”
Traxler, 3A’s 182-pound champion, jumped all the way to 220 for the team state tournament. He still managed to garner bonus-point wins.
“Before it’s all said and done, we’re probably going to have seven, eight guys wrestling next year at the collegiate level,” Marmion coach Don Reynolds said. “It’s going to be fun watching these guys as they move on to college.
“This is the first senior class I’ve been able to work with for four years. To be able to see these guys develop and get better and achieve their dreams, it’s been a dream come true as a coach.”
Speaking of coaches, even Marmion’s coach staff had to show their toughness this season.
Not many would return to the mat after a serious injury, but that’s exactly what Joe Silvestro did at the individual state tournament in Champaign.
In a freak accident, Silvestro tore his bicep while trying to keep two wrestlers from tumbling off the mat. He was in obvious pain, but he waived off trainers and returned to coach the remainder of the match. He’s scheduled for surgery Monday, after the season, of course.
“I can’t ask these guys to be tough if I’m not,” Silvestro said.
With this group, nobody’s questioning that.
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Logan Malloy is a freelance writer for the Beacon-News.