The INDEPENDENT, January 3, 2008
Page 11
Fight doesn’t end for Ian Rice after injury ends wrestling career
by Ben Schorzman
The sign on the side of the
school read “Home wrestling
meet. Rice versus Gwin – re-
match of the decade.” Those
two sentences were enough to
send excited shivers of antici-
pation down the spines of the
Vernonia inhabitants, and a
look inside the high school gym
that night proved that wrestling
reigned in the small logging
town. The worn, wooden
bleachers in the matchbook
size gymnasium were creaking
under the weight of a capacity
crowd, and the windows above
the two exit doors were fogged
in from the warm bodies that
were crowding around a
square, blue and yellow
wrestling mat.
On the mat, two muscle-
bound athletes circled each
other, oblivious to the deafen-
ing roar of the crowd. The
home-town hero, 18 year-old
Travis Gwin, stalked around the
circle, all 5’9” of him focused on
his opponent. He was dressed
in a black wrestling singlet that
was barely covering his well-
toned physique, and his dirty-
blond hair curled over his head-
gear. Facing Gwin was Ian Rice
from Clatskanie, a rival school
in Vernonia’s league. Rice
stood an impressive 6”2’ and
his red singlet stretched even
tighter across his broad shoul-
ders. These two had met be-
fore, the previous year in the
district tournament, with seed-
ing in the state wrestling cham-
pionships at stake. That time,
Gwin won in three rounds, and
it left Rice feeling empty. Gwin
went on to win state that year,
and even though Ian placed
third, the memory of that defeat
to a rival haunted him through
the summer. That’s why this
match was so important. Two of
the best wrestlers in the state
were squaring off for league,
state, and personal superiority.
The rematch was everything
everyone hoped it would be –
close, well wrestled, and elec-
tric. Both Gwin and Rice wres-
tled beautifully, and Rice won
the match 5-3, holding back
Gwin’s charge late in the third
round. Rice was so excited by
the win that he threw his head-
gear up so high that it hit the
gym ceiling. He pumped his
fists and yelled at the top of his
lungs as the Clatskanie fans
rushed the mat, pushing
through the downtrodden Ver-
nonia fans. But for all of the
hype and talk of animosity,
Gwin and Rice showed nothing
but class. Two giants in the
world of high school wrestling –
respected by their fellow stu-
dents, opponents, and commu-
nities – hugged in the center of
the mat and exchanged friendly
words.
Flash ahead three years,
and the older, bigger Ian Rice
comes into focus. Wrestling is
no longer a part of his life, and
the yells of his hometown fans
echo off of an empty gym’s
walls. The decision to cut
wrestling out of his life wasn’t a
choice Ian made willingly. It
was punched out of him. On
February 17, 2005, in the win-
ter of his freshman year, Ian
was halfway through his red-
shirt season as a member of
the University of Oregon
Wrestling team. In practice that
day, the team was working on
live matches. Teammates of
similar weights would square
off for rounds of three minutes,
and then switch partners. In the
heavyweight class, where Rice
fit in at 218 pounds, there were
only two guys, so Ian and his
partner practiced against each
other the entire time. His part-
ner, a senior member on the
team who will remain name-
less, didn’t take too kindly to
underclassmen getting the up-
per hand, so when Ian hit three
double-leg moves on him in a
row, he snapped. “As I was
crawling up his legs, getting
ready to pin him, he came up
and punched me in the temple.”
Rice recounts. “That right there
was enough to piss me off, but
I didn’t really know the extent of
my injuries.”
In fact, it was weeks later be-
fore Ian got a correct diagnosis.
At first doctors had told him it
was a neck injury, but after he
struggled through two more
weeks of classes, headaches,
and short-term memory loss,
Ian went back in. This time doc-
tors did a MRI, and they found
what they had missed the first
time – evidence of a severe
concussion. “They told me I
had to quit wrestling, and that I
could never do any contact
sport again,” Rice says. “It
turned my world upside down.”
For Ian, who had wrestled his
entire life, being told to quit was
hard to take. “It wasn’t easy. I
was good at wrestling, and
stopping so suddenly really got
to me. I was sort of depressed,
and I kept on wondering what I
was going to do with my life.”
The scenario Ian found himself
in was one that many athletes
have nightmares over. What do
you do when you have to quit
playing the sport you love? In
his case, Ian had to rethink his
entire life.
Besides the depression, Ian
fought multiple physical conse-
quences that were caused from
the roundhouse punch to the
head. Blurred vision, constant
headaches and short-term
memory loss all forced him to
withdraw from school, and be-
cause of how late the incident
occurred in the term, Ian was
forced to take an F in each of
his classes.
Ian recalls an instance when
his memory was so bad, he
couldn’t even remember having
lunch with friends. Three weeks
after the punch, he was going
to meet with some friends at
the food court in their dorm.
They were five minutes late,
and the next thing he could re-
member was the next day. Ian
saw his friends and asked them
why they didn’t show. They
looked puzzled, and said they
all had lunch. “I was blown
away,” Ian said. “They told me
that we had eaten, and after-
wards, we talked for over an
hour. I couldn’t remember any-
thing we talked about.”
When asked about the guy
who punched him, Ian shows a
level of maturity gained from
his ordeal. “People said I
could’ve sued him and the
school, but I didn’t want to
wreck his life because he got
frustrated and made a mistake.
I don’t know if you believe in
karma, but things that go
around come around. Being
unreasonably upset over the
punch would’ve gotten me
nowhere, and in reality it
would’ve probably made me
even more depressed.” The
premature end of his wrestling
career has helped Ian gain per-
spective on his life. Instead of
working full-time after dropping
out, he re-enrolled part-time at
the University of Oregon last
fall, and worked his way back
into school. “Education is too
important for me to give up,”
Ian said. “I want it that much
more now because it was that
close to being taken away from
me.”
Two years, fifteen MRIs, and
countless rehab sessions later,
Ian is recovering. His vision is
still not what it used to be, and
he still can’t participate in con-
tact sports, but he’s on the right
track. He lives in a two-story
apartment with a roommate,
and he holds a part-time job
working for UPS during the
week. He applied for the uni-
versity’s Lindquist School of
Business and, starting this
term, he’s back to being a full-
time student.
The topic of wrestling still
hurts to talk about though, and
one look around his living room
gives no hint into his former
passion. Ian has started anew,
using the heartbreaking situa-
tion to refocus his life. Even
though it’s a sore subject for
him, Ian would not be the per-
son he is today without
wrestling. The memories he
has of the bitter cold nights
spent grappling with opponents
define part of him. And no mat-
ter how much it hurts him, to
the people who were in Vernon-
ia’s gym that night, Ian will al-
ways be remembered as a
wrestling star from Clatskanie,
Oregon.
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