Foxcatcher: The True Story of My Brother's Murder, John du Pont's Madness, and the Quest for Olympic Gold (7 page)

Oklahoma, although not as storied a program as its archrival, Oklahoma State University, still featured one of the nation’s elite teams. The Sooners had won seven national championships, and at the time, only Oklahoma State had won more. The year before, Oklahoma had finished second at the Big 8 Conference tournament, behind Iowa State University and just ahead of OSU. The Sooners then placed fourth at the national tournament with four players honored as All-Americans. None of those four—Roger Frizzell, Andre Metzger, Isreal Sheppard, and Steve Williams—had graduated, so all would be returning for the 1981 season.

Jim Humphrey was an assistant coach at Oklahoma and one of the coaches on our Junior World team. Dave told Jim we were transferring to OU.

After our trip to Junior Worlds, Oklahoma head coach Stan Abel came to Palo Alto to recruit us. I wondered why he went through the hassle considering that Dave had already told his assistant that we were coming.

Stan and I met in my bedroom, and he launched into his standard recruiting pitch. He sounded like a car salesman making a speech he had repeated hundreds of times. Since I was the brother of Dave Schultz, I didn’t really think that was necessary, but he continued.

For a moment after he had left, I thought,
Maybe I shouldn’t go there.
But Stan turned out to be a good coach.

News of our decision didn’t go over well at UCLA. We went back to pack all our belongings in the used Subaru we’d recently purchased and then went to say good-bye to Brady Hall. Dave and Brady decided to get in one more workout against each other before we left.

Brady got an overhook on Dave’s arm and cranked Dave’s
shoulder hard. After practice, Dave and Brady drove back to Brady’s house.

Dave actually cried during the ride as he told Brady, “You tried to hurt me.”

“You’re damned right I tried to hurt you,” Brady said. “Look at what you’ve done. I knew this was going to happen. That’s why I didn’t want you to come out here in the first place. You came out here and now you’re leaving and taking Mark with you. I’m pissed!”

For once, I was glad to be Dave’s younger and less responsible brother. Brady never held me responsible for leaving UCLA. It had never occurred to me that Brady would be mad. The program was in such chaos that I thought it was only natural that wrestlers would want out. Stability is the most important factor in success, and we were leaving the instability and disarray of UCLA so Dave and I could have a better opportunity to wrestle under the stability and tradition of OU’s program.

All I had with me when we moved to Oklahoma was two bags of clothes. On the way, we stopped at California State University, Bakersfield, where a friend of ours, Joe Seay, was the coach. Joe tried to talk us into ending our trip right there and wrestling for him. Joe was building one of the best teams in the country and his offer was enticing, but the wrestling room was the smallest I had seen, with room for only one mat. I couldn’t imagine how an entire team trained in there.

Dave and I talked about Joe’s offer in our car and because we were fun-loving brothers, we decided to continue our discussion in a phone booth from which we would call the Oklahoma coaches if we changed our minds about going there. After we had weighed the pros and cons, Dave said, “Let’s flip a coin. Heads we go to OU; tails we stay here.”

The coin came up heads, but I think we would have driven on to Oklahoma even if it had been tails.

“I’m going to do a lot of sitting at OU,” I told Dave during the drive. That was my way of saying I was going to need to conserve every last ounce of energy to make it as a wrestler there.

I knew Dave would win at Oklahoma, but I was uncertain how I would do. I was starting only my fourth year of wrestling and we were joining one of the nation’s top recruiting classes.

Winning an NCAA team championship at UCLA would have been miraculous. At Oklahoma, championships were expected.

To survive in the OU wrestling room, I’d have to do a heckuva lot more than merely step it up a notch. I would have to sacrifice my life and train as hard as my body, mind, and soul would permit me. The greatest enemy I would face there was sitting in the passenger seat of our old Subaru and, to be honest, I didn’t have a real good scouting report on myself. I still hadn’t figured out who I was.

Failure was not an option. Yet on the other hand, I had no idea if I would be able to out-train, outsmart, outperform, and outsuffer everyone in my weight when the pressure was on and everything I was willing to sacrifice—my name, my reputation, my self-image, my flimsily positive attitude,
my life
—was on the line.

I adopted a philosophy of “do or die” heading into Oklahoma. I’d be doing everything and anything to conserve energy for my most focused attempt at becoming the greatest fighter on the planet. I would
have
to conserve energy if there was any chance of that happening.

But, still, I had serious doubts.

Was it even possible for me to be the best? Could I follow
through on my commitment to withstand everything without knowing what “everything” consisted of?

I didn’t know the answer to any of those questions. I also didn’t know that Oklahoma would become my personal hell on earth.

The first time I saw Norman, Oklahoma, was when we drove into town to start school there. I had visited Stillwater, the home of Oklahoma State, on a recruiting trip my senior year of high school, but that was in the spring. Summer in Oklahoma was a whole different story.

The very first day of practice, the entire team was led out to a duck pond behind the “jock dorms.” We lined up and raced around a beaten-path course. Oh, my goodness! I thought I was running on the surface of the sun.

—

W
e both majored in exercise science, because those classes would take the least time away from wrestling. Dave and I took as many of the same classes as we could so if one of us was off wrestling or sick, the other could take notes and share them. Dave worked hard to overcome the academic challenge of having dyslexia. I finished with a 3.0 GPA at Oklahoma, and Dave’s was actually higher than mine, but we squandered the educational opportunities we had. We both went to school to wrestle, not get an education. That was a huge mistake on our parts.

I almost could have passed for a deaf mute at OU. I didn’t talk unless it was absolutely necessary or, on limited occasions, to make someone laugh. With my dad being a comedian, I thought if there was one best use for talking, it would be to make people laugh.

However, I never joked around with other wrestlers in my weight class. When you’re on the wrestling mat, you have to turn into a selfish, greedy bastard and torture your opponent until either you or the final horn makes him give up. I learned real fast in the sport not to give away any friendship or trust to anyone in or around your weight. With wrestlers not around your weight—who you knew didn’t have the potential to become “enemies” on your own team—it was acceptable to develop friendships. Actually, it was preferred, because you wanted greatness around you. You wanted others’ greatness to rub off on you. If someone was great in wrestling, you had to respect him or you were disrespecting the very thing that you wanted to become.

But for anyone in or around my weight class, forget about it.

I worked hard at making myself as unapproachable as possible. I tried to always say less than the person I was talking to. When I did have to speak, it was at a low volume. I avoided nonwrestlers as much as I could, too, except for female students I wanted to get to know, of course. I frequently wore sunglasses and earphones so no one knew if I was watching them or could hear them. I looked down most of the time. I didn’t want anyone to know what I was thinking or feeling.

I needed every advantage I could get with the quality of wrestlers around me at Oklahoma, and that included creating an aura of intimidation. I couldn’t afford to show my human side, because as soon as others began to understand me, that aura of intimidation would start deteriorating. That hurt me in my relationships, especially with the opposite sex. But everything had to be sacrificed if I was to win.

The wrestlers lived on the same floor of the dorm, but I didn’t
think I could afford to show mercy, friendship, or trust. In the wrestling room, those would be used against me every time.

Dave was different. He became a merciless barbarian on the mat, but one step off the mat, he turned back into an angel. Later in his career, he learned to speak Russian so that he could communicate directly with the Russians and better understand how the world’s top wrestlers thought. The Russian wrestlers and fans respected that to the point that at the Tbilisi tournament in Soviet Georgia, he could sit in the stands and talk to fans in Russian, go down to the mat and torture his next opponent, and then change clothes and go back up to the stands and continue visiting with the fans.

Now, outside of wrestling season, it was a different story for me. I partied like crazy when we weren’t in season, but from November through the third weekend of March, there was no such things as “outside of wrestling.” My whole world was wrestling, even when I left the room.

Because we had transferred, Dave and I had to sit out of competition our first year with the Sooners. I’ve seen some athletes during my long tenure in the sport turn that sit-out year into a year off, almost a vacation. Not me. I didn’t think I would have been good enough to make the team consistently that year, so I determined to turn my redshirt year into an advantage.

Coaches Abel and Humphrey were a great combination. Coach Abel didn’t get too deeply involved in the technical side of wrestling. He had been a two-time NCAA champion, but that was when technique wasn’t as important as conditioning. Coach Humphrey, who was still competing as a wrestler, knew technique well and handled more of that side of coaching.

Competition for spots on the OU roster would be tough, and Coach Abel’s strategy for piecing together a team was pretty cutthroat. He recruited a ton of talented guys, packed the room with them, and then let them beat on each other until the toughest came out on top. He was also smart with the scholarship money the NCAA allowed. He had all of us out-of-state wrestlers obtain Oklahoma driver’s licenses and register to vote in Cleveland County so that we met the criteria for being Oklahoma residents and qualified for the less-expensive in-state tuition. Then he had us fill out requests for federal Pell Grants and made sure we put down a zero for earned income for the previous year. (That was accurate, but it was important enough for him to make sure we followed directions.) The Pell Grants covered the amount of the in-state tuition, and that freed up our scholarships for the new batch of incoming recruits. I wouldn’t have had to wrestle to pay for school after my first year at OU.

Even looking toward the next year, I knew that my main competition on the OU roster was Israel Sheppard, a chiseled 158-pounder who was tougher than nails. (Isreal’s name was often misspelled as “Israel.” I spelled his name wrong a bunch of times until the wrestling coach’s secretary corrected me, and then I made sure I wrote it correctly every time.)

When I met Isreal, he was confident and brash and didn’t mind attracting the attention of the coaches. Coach Abel seemed really pleased with Isreal at my weight. I knew my only option, as one of my mottos stated, was “kill or be killed.”

Workouts with Isreal were superintense. The OU wrestling room wasn’t as nice as would be expected of such an established program. There were three padded pillars in the center of the room,
but one of the pillars was partially unpadded, leaving a small spot of bare wood exposed. Once, I tried to slam Isreal’s head into that unpadded area but missed.

Isreal wore his hair in cornrows that felt like steel wool. When we wrestled, his cornrows would rub my face. Sometimes his hair would rub against my face so much that I’d flinch in the shower when water hit the raw spots. One day I noticed that the foam on top of the left side of my headgear was wearing away and the aluminum metal underneath the pad was barely poking through. That piece of aluminum was almost like a blade. The next time Isreal shot for my legs, I blocked him with my head and noticed that the bare aluminum had slightly cut him. I had found my answer to his cornrows. He didn’t seem to braid his hair in cornrows as frequently after that.

I held an interesting view toward Isreal at the time. I cared nothing about him, because he was an enemy, yet he was one of the most valuable people in my life, because I could practice brutal moves against him without a shred of remorse. Going up against Isreal in practice as much as I did clearly helped me develop into a better wrestler.

Sometimes in our workouts, the team would work only on takedowns. I made up my mind that no matter who I was wrestling, I would never be the first one to say “I’m done.” I also determined that regardless of who got the takedown, I would be first back to the center of the mat ready to start the next round. When I could get two or three guys to say “I’m done” in one day, I knew my strategies were working.

A constant part of Coach Abel’s conditioning drills was running the stadium stairs at Owen Field, the football stadium. One
day after we had run to the top, just to prove to the other wrestlers—and myself—that I wasn’t scared of anything, I climbed over the edge of the top of the stadium with one arm dangling over the wall. When I knew that everyone else on the team had seen me, I climbed back over. Then, of course, some of the others had to prove they could do it, too.

Practices were so intense that afterward, we looked as if we were competitors in some strange, clothed water sport. We’d be drenched head to toe in sweat as if we had jumped into a pool. We could see big wet spots on all the mats when we were done, and invariably a fog floated above the room. When we left, our shoes squished as we walked.

But I wanted more. Well, I didn’t really want more, but I
needed
more. After practice, I would do pushups, V-ups, body lifts, wall sits, and frog hops. I’d secretly get in one extra workout every day. I assumed my opponents, who were actually my teammates, wouldn’t understand why I didn’t get as tired during practice as they did, and that would destroy their confidence when they faced me.