Pauli, a senior at Windsor, said his wrestling coaches told him they wanted him to compete at 145 pounds. Pauli, who qualified for the Class 3 state tournament the last two years at that weight, placed fourth in 2018. He was being asked to maintain a weight from his sophomore year.
Ultimately, for what he said were health reasons, Pauli left the team earlier this month.
I first interviewed Pauli when he was a freshman. When a three-time state wrestler quits halfway through his senior year, it’s only right to let him tell his side of the story.
I asked Windsor head coach Ryan Bollinger to do the same. You’ll read his response.
“I told (the coaches) my body was aching and (Bollinger) told me to take the day off,” Pauli said. “What he didn’t tell me was we were having challenge matches that day. There are set dates for challenge matches.”
Pauli said there was a rule at the school that forbids varsity wrestlers from challenging at a higher weight.
“I’ve never heard anyone else say that. I’ve never heard another team doing that,” Pauli said.
Since then, Pauli and his parents, Brad and Stephanie, met with Bollinger and Windsor athletic director Ross Koenig, Stephanie said. A solution couldn’t be found. Pauli has wrestled his last match at the school in Imperial.
“The meeting went OK,” Stephanie said. “It did not come out with the exact results we wanted. But we’re proud of Grant’s decision. We wanted them to allow him a challenge to wrestle up for health issues. Grant was struggling with the weight (145).”
I requested an interview with Bollinger about the matter. He responded with an email that said, “To maintain student privacy, we are not at liberty to discuss specific student situations. Windsor is proud to offer a wide variety of extracurricular activities. Our activities are guided by team rules, state guidelines and codes of conduct that ensure a positive environment for teamwork and student growth. We view these activities as an opportunity to bring our community together to demonstrate our school pride and support our students. When we combine our student expectations and community spirit, it creates what we call the Windsor Way.”
Grant, Stephanie and his older brother, Brenden, a 2010 graduate of Windsor, came to the Leader office last week. They said they wanted to set the record straight and let the public know why a senior who’d been wrestling year-round since he was 6 years old decided to leave the Owls a month before the state championships.
According to Grant, by the time he wrestled at the Kinloch Classic on Jan. 3-4, his body was worn out from maintaining his weight at 145. Although that’s where he’d found state success the last two years (he qualified for state at 138 as a freshman), he said he felt run down all the time.
“I was struggling to keep 145,” he said. “The night we got down to Kinloch, I ran five miles and lost my weight the first day by three or four ounces. That day I ate and probably ate too much. But you can’t expect me not to eat. I need energy.”
Grant said he ate a handful of pretzels and a pack of tuna. He wrestled five matches in the pool setup in one day.
“My body was aching for the first match, but after that I wrestled perfectly fine,” he said.
Two weeks earlier, he was preparing to wrestle with the Owls at the Union Tournament.
“During practice, I’d get dizzy and would feel lightheaded,” he said. “When I went to (urinate) I couldn’t do it properly. My (urine) was dark brown and it burned and it was syrupy.”
This was a sign of dehydration. He had taken magnesium citrate to clean out his bowels.
“I knew immediately when he told me, that’s your kidneys telling you, ‘This isn’t good,’” Stephanie said.
The Missouri State High School Activities Association has guidelines for how much weight a wrestler can lose and how much body fat is to be maintained for a proper minimum weight. You can find those standards online at mshsaa.org.
Before the season began, Grant wrestled at the Blue Chip Fall Brawl in Kansas City in October. He competed for a club team at 152 pounds and lost a 6-4 sudden victory to Staley’s Blake Berryman, who won the weight class at the tournament. When the high school season began, Grant said he told the Windsor coaches he wanted to wrestle at 160, with their response that they wanted him to stay at 145 “for the good of the team.”
Dominic Pona has been wrestling at 160 for the Owls. Grant said one of his best friends on the team, Luke Longtin, is wrestling at 152, the weight he qualified for state last year. Grant made it clear during our talk that he wasn’t blaming Longtin or Pona for his situation and he wishes them success as the season winds down.
“I’m not here to name names or put anyone down. I just want to get my story heard,” Grant said.
He and his mother said they believe his problems with the Windsor coaches began at the state tournament last year. Coming off of his fourth-place finish the year before, expectations were high he could become the school’s third state champion in as many years. I touted that expectation in the season preview. After winning his first-round match, he lost in the quarterfinals.
Grant won again in the second round of wrestlebacks, but lost by disqualification in the third-round wrestlebacks to Smithville’s Ryan Hampton. Being DQ’d at state isn’t something a wrestler wants on his resume. Of the 406 boys matches at state in Class 3 last year, there were just two disqualifications.
There were five seconds to go in the match and Pauli was trailing by a point.
“He (Hampton) turtled up to defend himself and that’s completely understandable,” Pauli said. “I tried a quick power half and I rushed to it and I put my forearm to the back of his head hard. He said he had a concussion and took his headgear off.”
The next day Hampton wrestled and took third place at 145.
“He (Pauli) comes up the stairs (at Mizzou Arena) and he was in tears, not because he lost, but because he was embarrassed. He was so remorseful for what he did,” his brother said.
“I apologized to the Smithville coach and the wrestler,” Grant said.
Stephanie, Grant and Brenden all said they immediately saw a change in how Bollinger acted toward Grant after that.
Grant enlisted in the Navy last year. He ships out for Naval Station Great Lakes, Ill., in July for boot camp. He said he’d like to wrestle while in the Navy, but the job he’ll train for is to be a cryptologic technician-technical.
He said he couldn’t jeopardize his first job after high school by constantly being sick because he was cutting too much weight.
Does he think he’ll regret his decision to quit wrestling his senior year?
“Only time will tell,” he said. “Right now, I don’t because I based it on health reasons. To go into the Navy, I have to stay healthy.”