Wrestling was a bit of a last-ditch option for Mount Carmel’s Ryan Boersma as he tried to find a sport he enjoyed.
“I started wrestling when I was 9 in fourth grade,” Boersma said. “I tried a bunch of sports and I didn’t really like them. I was not really good at baseball. Too much running in basketball, although I think I’ve outgrown that phase of not liking running.
“I just tried wrestling pretty much on a whim, and the rest is history.”
Indeed, things have worked out pretty well for Boersma on the wrestling mat.
The senior heavyweight, a Missouri recruit, became a two-time individual state champion — winning his first Illinois High School Association title last month. He then led the Caravan to the Class 3A team championship.
Mount Carmel beat DeKalb 32-27 in the final dual to win its fourth state championship and first since 1993-94.
“It was awesome,” said Boersma, the 2021-22 Daily Southtown Wrestler of the Year. “It was a treat to be able to help lead that team and to have all the guys step up the way that they did.
“DeKalb was a very solid team, but we showed everybody why we’ve been ranked in the top 20 in the country and why we wrestle at some of the toughest tournaments in the Midwest and the country.”
Boersma did everything he possibly could at dual team state to push Mount Carmel over the top. He pinned his opponent in the three duals, all in the first period.
He finished with a 44-2 record and ended the season on a winning streak in the 30s after losing twice to out-of-state competition in December at the prestigious Walsh Ironman Tournament in Ohio.
“I lost two matches by one point each at Ironman,” Boersma said. “I feel like if I had wrestled those guys later in the year, it might have gone a little differently.
“Coming off football, I wasn’t where I needed to be with my mindset and my style. But after that, I was able to get where I needed to be.”
A big part of it was aggression.
Boersma — a four-time state qualifier who took fifth place as a sophomore at Providence before transferring to Mount Carmel — has had success his whole high school career, but he started as a traditional, defensive heavyweight looking to grind out low-scoring matches.
“My freshman year, I pretty much lived off defense,” he said. “I’ve been working on being a more offensive-minded wrestler. This year, I tried not to focus too much on getting scored on and focused on scoring points myself.
“That’s how Mizzou wrestlers wrestle and I want to wrestle like that. I’ve watched them a lot the past two years and I try to model myself off that style.”
Boersma showed that off at state, pinning or scoring multiple takedowns in the first period in all four of his matches.
“He’s definitely a lot more confident in his offense,” Mount Carmel coach Alex Tsirtsis said. “That’s really good going into college. I think he’s just going to get better and better.”
Boersma said he tried to lead his team more by example than with words, but Tsirtsis recalled an important speech.
“He’s a great leader for the team,” Tsirtsis said of Boersma. “I took the guys in the hallway before we came out for the (state championship dual) and he asked if he could speak to the team.
“He did and he got everyone fired up. I think that helped a lot. It’s a big thing to have everyone mentally focused and ready to go, and I think he’s been a big part of that all year.”
As Boersma prepares to move on to Missouri, he’s proud of having left his mark at Mount Carmel.
“It means a lot,” he said. “Leaving a legacy at Mount Carmel is awesome, and being forever immortalized as part of that program’s history is unreal.”
Steve Millar is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.