Mitchell Wrestles His Way To The Top

Feb. 4, 2003

Throughout its 50-year history, the Atlantic Coast Conference has produced 14 NCAA individual wrestling champions. There haven't been any national champs from the ACC since UNC standout T.J. Jaworsky wrapped up his third straight title in 1995, and Duke has never had one.

But at least one member of the current Blue Devil squad harbors hopes of filling that void in the school's wrestling tradition. When junior Michael Mitchell first arrived on campus he discovered that Duke had never turned out an All-America wrestler, much less a national champ. So winning Duke's first NCAA title became his immediate goal, and it's a goal that remains firmly implanted in his mind as the 2003 season hits high gear this month.

"It's tough," Duke coach Clar Anderson says of the mountain Mitchell aspires to climb. "There are usually one or two kids who are the top kids in the country and then the next 20 kids are vying for the next five or six spots. And Michael is every bit there. He's gone very close with All-Americas, he's beaten some ranked kids in that top 20. So it's a legitimate expectation or goal for him to hope to be an All-America, but it's not a given."

Mitchell is in his fourth year at Duke but is wrestling in just his third ACC campaign after missing his true sophomore season due to knee surgery. He competes in the 165-pound weight class and last year reached the ACC championship match before falling 9-7 to Pierre Pryor of N.C. State. Each ACC champion receives a bid to the NCAA Championship; Mitchell also got to go because he was voted one of the conference's wild card selections, and he gained some valuable experience at nationals despite losing both his matches.

With Pryor gone this year, Mitchell would seem to be a strong candidate to win Duke's 23rd ACC individual wrestling crown and move on to the NCAAs again. But Anderson says the 165-pound weight class has gotten deeper with excellent recruiting at North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, not to mention the fact that last year's 174-pound champ and NCAA qualifier, Dustin Kawa of N.C. State, has dropped down to the 165 class this year.

"The people who follow me all assume I'm going to go to nationals again, but you have to take care of business before that," says Mitchell. "Last year I went on a wild card. The ACC has lost one of its wild card spots, so I don't want to risk taking second place this year. I want to win it, that's the first step."

Mitchell has done his share of winning already this season. His overall record is 24-8, including an 11-1 mark in dual match bouts entering a Feb. 4 date with UNC. His record the last two years is 50-22. To build on that mark in the upcoming toughest matches of the season, Anderson has been trying to help Mitchell relax and loosen up on the mat.

"He has the most difficult time (wrestling against) the kids who are unorthodox," says Anderson, a former national champion and three-time All-America at Oklahoma State. "In some ways he's a typical Duke kid in that he's so conscientious and works so hard. He can get so uptight in his style of wrestling that he's afraid of making mistakes, and that becomes his mistake."

Mitchell might be viewed as a typical Duke kid in a lot of other ways. He excelled in several sports at Midwest City High School in Oklahoma, winning not only state and national wrestling titles but also helping a track relay team to a state crown. And he was the number one student in his senior class, the valedictorian.

At Duke he began thriving immediately in the academic sector with a 3.75 grade point average his freshman year. He has been pursuing a degree in Economics, with a double minor in French and German to bolster his desire of landing in an international career upon graduation. He has become active in his fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, and all the work he's poured into his athletics career is paying off.

But there are also parts of his story that are not typical Duke. The son of a single parent, he moved out of his mom's house the summer before his senior year of high school, in part to prove that he could survive on his own. He worked a construction job by day and a restaurant job by night, sometimes putting in 90 hours a week. He moved in with a friend, saved enough money to buy a car and insurance, and kept working until December of his senior year when he had to cut back to focus on repeating his state wrestling title. "I did enough to pay for my senior year, which can be pretty expensive," he says. "Looking back now I think, 'Did I really do that?'"

Mitchell reunited with his mother before heading off to Duke. She drove him to Durham from Oklahoma, giving the pair an opportunity to bond more closely. She came to visit last year to see him perform in his fraternity's step show, and she returned last week to watch him wrestle for the first time in college.

But their reunion didn't alleviate Mitchell's fiscal pressures. Wrestling is a non-scholarship sport at Duke, so Mitchell is responsible for financing his college career. Financial aid in the form of grants and loans covers most of the cost, but not all. Over the past four years he's held down a wide variety of summer and work-study jobs to make ends meet, from hard labor at a box factory to lifeguarding and monitoring the weight room in Brodie Gym on East Campus. "I think working for your education makes it more rewarding," he says.

Since he redshirted a year due to injury, Mitchell hopes to return for a fifth season of eligibility next year. Since financial aid typically is not available for more than nine semesters, he plans to take the fall semester off to work at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado, a final boost to improve his chances of competing for a national title. But, that depends in part on finding an internship or summer employment that will enable him to cover his fall expenses plus what he'll need for his final semester.

"It's an opportunity to work with Olympians and some of the top guys in the country," says Anderson, who has helped current Blue Devils Tommy Hoang, Tom Cass, Frank Cornely and Andy Soliman land spots at the training center in the past. "It's a tremendous experience, but a huge sacrifice to get that fifth year for a non-scholarship athlete."

Growing up in a wrestling hotbed, Mitchell was recruited by Oklahoma and he looked at Minnesota, Chicago and Oklahoma State, which didn't recruit him. He became interested in Duke after hearing about the engineering school, without knowing where the school was or anything about the basketball team. Anderson started recruiting him after he watched him win a national tournament at N.C. State the summer before his senior year. Mitchell felt that no other school could offer what Duke offered, even without a scholarship possibility on the table. Anderson's coaching expertise was one of those selling points, along with the appeal of enhancing the school's wrestling tradition.

"When you look back, guys rarely go to nationals from Duke," Mitchell explains. "This year we have a team with three returning national qualifiers (himself, Cass and Hoang). And Clar knows so much. He's competed with the best and knows what the best do.

"Clar has taken me to the next level. I'm not ranked, but it's just a matter of me turning the corner. For me to win a national title, I'd give him pretty much all of it. And for the program, I think it would make it more attractive. Clar's background makes guys want to come wrestle here. Then to actually see guys win national championships would be even more appealing."

Anderson, the 134-pound NCAA winner in 1984, knows how difficult it is for anyone to win nationals, scholarship or not. Only nine athletes in Duke history have won NCAA individual crowns in their sport, including the last two years in women's golf. Knowing all the odds Mitchell has overcome to get to this point in his career, Anderson will do anything possible to help Mitchell realize his dream.

"He's an athlete, he's a student, he has a part-time job and he maintains his valedictorian status. He's a phenomenal kid," Anderson says. "To have a kid like Michael and give him an opportunity to get into Dukeand wrestle at Duke, a place that will hopefully open up many doors for him - that's one of the things you'd like to look back on in life and say, 'Hey, I was a part of the molding phase or the enhancing phase of Michael Mitchell's life.' That's going to be incredibly rewarding when that happens."

One of Anderson's toughest tasks with Mitchell is to sometimes reel him in to prevent him from overtraining. As a freshman he used to go running with the cross country team in addition to his wrestling workouts. Now he can't run as much because of a knee that had most of its meniscus removed last summer, but he's been just as diligent with other extra conditioning workouts, such as swimming.

That's probably because of his tendency to leave nothing to chance. He knows he's likely to return for a fifth season in 2004, but what if the knee succumbs or the finances fall through?

"That's what I'm training so hard for now," he says. "It's not like I'm going to walk through (to nationals). Each ACC match I want to go out and dominate my opponent.

"You only live once and I'm not promised tomorrow, so I looked at this season like it was my last season to wrestle. I want to do it now. I don't want to worry about any extra variables."

Mitchell Wrestles His Way To The Top

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