By KLAS STOLPE
Sentinel Staff Writer
While the character of some champions is rewarded with that moniker and hands being raised, and trophies presented, sometimes character is earned with valiant efforts that fall just short of an aspired goal.
Mt. Edgecumbe junior Haley Osborne was a favorite to repeat as the 285-pound champion at Saturday’s ASAA State Wrestling Championships in Anchorage.
“He is humble,” Mt. Edgecumbe coach Mike Kimber said as he watched Braves heavyweight Haley Osborne warm up before the title bouts.
Osborne worked with 135-pound finals teammate Brystel Charlie and Kimber’s daughter Sydnee, an Olympic wrestling hopeful at McKendree College home for the holidays.
An hour earlier she had watched her father inducted into the Alaska State Wrestling Hall of Fame.
“I can see Haley in my father,” she said. “And my father in Haley. They are passionate about wrestling and care about teammates and opponents. But I wouldn’t want to be on their bad side.”
Throughout the two-day event Osborne could be seen watching his teammates’ matches, encouraging them after, and briefly talking with those vanquished.
Mt. Edgecumbe junior Haley Osborne fends off a takedown attempt by Homer senior Jadin Mann during their 285-pound title match at Saturday’s Alaska School Activities Association State Wrestling Championships in Anchorage’s Alaska Airlines Center. (Sentinel Photo by Klas Stolpe)
He pinned his opponents from Nikiski, Craig and Haines within 45 seconds, spending more time putting on his singlet than grappling on the tournament mats. He also spent more time talking to them after.
On the other side of the bracket Homer’s heavyweight school hopeful Jadin Mann did the same, dispatching by pin athletes from Galena, Elim and Bethel high schools.
They were aware of each other.
“I haven’t got to watch him wrestle a whole lot,” Homer teacher, athletic director and coach Chris Perk said. “We saw him at ACS this year and state last year and he seems like a really fine young man. He gets out on the mat, he’s physical and we are looking forward to our big boy, who is physical too, facing him on the mat.”
Perk was also honored before the finals with induction into the Alaska Wrestling Hall of Fame. The 7-time Alaska free style champ, 2-time state champ, and NAIA collegiate all-American wrestler said wrestling was a lot like life and saw a quality of character in both of the heavyweights about to meet.
“I think that it truly is a test of your endurance of life,” Perk said. “Because there is so many things that get thrown at you that you don’t expect and it is how you rebound. How you deal with those situations, and it happens like that in wrestling. You can’t always predict what the other guy is going to do and yet you have to respond to it instantaneously to be effective.”
Osborne and Mann stood on opposite sides of the center mat.
The floor seemed to tilt in the direction of the one whose foot struck first while pacing.
The air inside the arena seemed to suck toward whose chest expanded first.
Parents held tightly small children, athletes stopped their own warmups to watch, the referee seemed apprehensive as he approached the two.
Mann was taller and heavier and his legs were twice the size of his opponent’s.
Osborne had the arm and hand strength.
The match would go six minutes. Three periods. Possibly longer than the combined total of the matches of either one all season.
At the end it did not matter, really, that the score was 5-1 in the opposition’s favor. Osborne was exhausted in defeat, Mann fatigued in the victory.
They shook hands, embraced, and did the same with both coaching staffs.
“This was the first time I wrestled him,” Mann said. “It was fun. He was really strong. Really big arms and hands… top heavy and strong. I kind of assumed it would come down to us two.
“It was nice to just have to shake his hand on the award podium and not worry about wrestling him any more.”
Osborne found 30 seconds to sit by himself. Last season he sat as a champion, this year the path had been harder.
“I am understanding what happened,” he said.
No one approached and he sat quietly until he stood to cheer on the next athletes.
“He is fun to watch because he is a good human being as well as a good athlete,” coach Kimber said. “Last year the difference was that we brought in a team from Oregon and their heavyweight was able to challenge Haley and prepare him for the state tournament. Haley has worked for every moment out here.”
Kimber recounted a story of himself as a boy in Unalakleet. He and his father, also Mike, were driving their four-wheeler through the village and saw a man carrying a 55-gallon drum on his shoulder, half full of gas, and they offered him a ride. The man was Eric Osborne, Haley’s father.
“He said nope, he was good,” Kimber recounted. “He carried it another mile. He is a beast of a man, with a good heart and super intellectual, and that’s where Haley gets it from.”
Raised in White Mountain, Haley grew up around a lot of family, forging intimate relationships through culture and town history, something he has always maintained.
Eric Osborne was on hand to see his son wrestle in the state tournament.
“Haley was always a very nice, loving, humble kid,” he said. “I think Haley embodies values that he learned from life, from his family too, but a lot from life. He believes in standing up for his community. In this case he is standing up for his school, town and family but he has high ideals. And he expresses it in the way he wrestles.”
Eric recounted watching his son talking with a really good wrestler from Bethel. They became good friends after they met at the Alaska Native Youth Olympics.
“They were sort of coaching each other,” Eric said. “Although they might be in opposition of each other, they were really trying to improve each other going into the match. That is the type of sportsmanship that one sees at the Native Olympics.”
Haley is a multiple gold medalist in the annual gathering of the best Alaska Native athletes from around the state.
His father believes that type of sportsmanship is sometimes lacking at some high school events, that there is sometimes a win at all costs ethos.
“I like that he is maintaining his values in this sport,” he said. “It is a valuable lesson that this world has forgotten and it is nice to see it in these kids. You learn something from that, that you don’t judge, you encourage.”
When Haley left White Mountain for Nome, and then Nome to attend Mt. Edgecumbe, the Nanooks fans followed.
In an Anchorage tournament earlier this season the Nome community there to cheer on the Nanooks, also supported Osborne, the young man that returns each summer to help elders, visit friends, and play with the kids that follow him about.
The young man that chose wrestling to further his education.
“He has learned that all by himself,” Eric Osborne said. “I have encouraged him to do some reading about the philosophy behind fighting.”
Haley has devoured that as well. He has read “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu – twice – and refers to passages in the book. It is an ancient Chinese military treatise.
“From the Spring and Autumn Period,” Haley said.
For the casual sports fan that is roughly 771 to 476 BC.
The book is composed of 13 chapters, each devoted to a distinct aspect of warfare, and it is still studied by military strategists.
Haley just finished “The Book Of Five Rings” before the state tournament. It is a text on kenjutsu and martial arts in general, written by the Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi in 1645.
He also reads books on Zen, and the mind-to-mind teachings of clearing one’s mind in order to act spontaneously.
“Not thinking too much, so you can improvise on the mat, in the moment,” Haley said.
The father and son fish Norton Sound in the summer.
They harvest crab through July and into August, chum salmon in August and silver salmon in September. They await the return of kings in June and late May and they look to the horizon hoping the Norton Sound herring will return someday.
Haley stands on the edge of the boat, grabbing crab pots off the block and throwing them around the deck. Or he moves thousands of pounds of salmon.
When told that kids are what their parents make of them, Eric Osborne did not hesitate.
“Parents are what their kids make them too,” he said. “You don’t have kids, kids have you. I have six.”
The youngest, Kale, will be at Mt. Edgecumbe next year also. On this day, however, he was standing next to his champion brother, whose large arm wrapped around his smaller sibling before heading out onto the mat at the state tournament.
