Wrestling's Piotrowsky has seen peaks, valleys

Freshman wrestler Mark Piotrowsky knows all about the ups and downs so many first-year students go through at college. He could write a book about it. The soft-spoken Piotrowsky entered his debut season at Penn with promising credentials. He placed twice in the New Jersey state high school championships and came from the same program that produced two of Penn's rising stars, Josh and Jeremy Bailer. Piotrowsky quickly showed his stuff, posting a 9-4 mark in individual meets and beating out two talented sophomores -- Mike Gaugler and Steve Walker -- for the starting spot at 134 pounds. But when the dual-meet season began at the prestigious Virginia Duals, the high school superstar quickly became the overwhelmed rookie. "I was really nervous," Piotrowsky said. "Especially going down to the Virginia Duals. It was the first dual meet for the team. Right from the beginning, I wasn't wrestling well. "After I lost the first one, I knew my next two matches were against all-Americans. I thought, 'these guys are all-Americans, there's no way I'm going to hang with them.' I know that was the wrong way to think. After the first loss, I just kept on thinking about it. Then I lost my next one and my next one and it was a downhill roll." After losing all five of his matches at Virginia, Piotrowsky continued his slump through Navy, Bucknell and Cornell. The losing streak reached eight. And as the losses mounted, so did the frustration. The losing streak would affect Piotrowsky when he was with his friends; he would get angry at them without a reason. "Every wrestler has been in a slump, so we could all associate with him," said freshman wrestler Keith Reynolds, who rooms with Piotrowsky. "We all tried to give him advice -- it was pretty much, 'just lay it on the line.' " What was particularly hard for Piotrowsky was telling his parents about the defeats. His father, a high school wrestling coach, was supplied with the tapes of the Virginal Duals matches by the Bailer family, who had made the trip south. "When I was down in Virginia, just having to call home and tell them that I had lost five in a row was tough. My mom had a typical mom reaction: 'that's all right, you'll do better next time.' My dad was more of a realist. He was critiquing the matches when he saw the tapes." Fred Piotrowsky, Mark's father, remembers a situation Mark went through as a child that was analogous to his midseason difficulties at Penn. When Mark was 11, he had won the kids' federation state championship and was set to face a boy in summer camp who had also won the championship. The elder Piotrowsky said Mark, who first tried to get out of the match by saying he felt ill, had a look on his face that spelled defeat. After getting pinned in 25 seconds, Mark was teary-eyed. "I asked him, 'What are you crying about?' " Fred Piotrowsky said. "You thought you were going to lose. Your brother thought you were going to lose. I thought you were going to lose. Everyone in this whole place thought you would lose. You accomplished your goal!" The message from Dad gave his son at age 11 was the same message he delivered this season: Wrestle with a winning attitude. His father said he made a point to visit Mark at the Columbia dual meet, and he picked a motivational quote, sports related of course, to tell to his struggling son. "I told him, 'Some people, when they play golf all they see are the sand traps, and other people, all they see are the greens,' " Fred Piotrowsky said. After receiving his father's wisdom, Piotrowsky started focusing on the greens. Although he was edged out 6-4 in his next match against Cornell's Mike Yancoskey, ranked No. 1 in the EIWA, Mark Piotrowsky believes the match was the turning point of his season. "I was losing in the second period," Piotrowsky said. "I just figured this kid was ranked pretty high in the Easterns and I had nothing to lose. In the third period, I just went totally after him. I took him down once and I almost had another takedown. I wasn't happy with the loss, but I was happy that I started to get aggressive again." It was against Harvard, though, that the slump officially ended. Piotrowsky ended his eight-meet slide with a 6-2 victory over his Crimson opponent, Joel Friedman. "My first feeling was relief in getting my first win and ending the slump," Piotrowsky said. "My second feeling was that I did it in this match, I know I can do it in the next match." And he did do it in the next match with a 9-1 major decision over Ed Braunsdorf, a fifth-year senior from Rutgers. But it was in the biggest match of the year against Brown, the No. 1 team in the EIWA at the time, that Piotrowsky ended all doubts. He was back. Piotrowsky's opponent was senior captain Dave Gustovich, an NCAA qualifier. But before the Bears could pencil in a victory, the underdog Piotrowsky had something to say. And he voiced it with his performance in a 3-2 upset over the senior captain. Penn beat Brown 16-15 that day. Piotrowsky's upset was the difference. Although Piotrowsky felt that at one point the coach was going to replace him in the starting lineup, Penn coach Roger Reina insisted he never thought of replacing Piotrowsky. Was Reina gratified that his decision keyed the biggest victory of the year? "I think it gave him gratification," Reina said. "I think he's the guy who deserves it. I was happy to see him get back on the game plan and start wrestling like he's capable. It's a real confidence builder as an athlete to pull yourself out of a slump. You're going to gain confidence match by match. It goes to your ability to face adversity in the future." After the Brown match, Piotrowsky defeated his next four opponents. Countering his eight-match losing streak with a seven-match winning streak, Piotrowsky was rewarded with a No. 6 seed heading into the Eastern championships. "As long as I wrestle up to my ability, it's going to take a real good wrestler to beat me," Piotrowsky said about his prospects at Easterns. "I'm feeling real confident."