by Dan Severn
Dave and I both had AAU and USWF membership cards, and whichever sanctioning group had the more prestigious event taking place on that weekend, that’s where you’d find us.
Even though the high school season was over, we would sometimes compete in meets each day of the weekend, starting with Friday night, and then continuing on through Sunday.
If there was nothing going on in Michigan in terms of wrestling that weekend, we’d look for tournaments in Indiana and Ohio, and sometimes we even crossed the bridge into Canada to look for people to wrestle against. Border crossings were easier back then, because you didn’t need a passport or a Nexus Pass to get into Canada. All you had to do was tell the guard whether your nationality was American or Canadian. In our minds, no distance was too far to travel in order to find competition.
By extending our wrestling season into the spring and summer months, we accelerated our development process greatly. We competed in both freestyle events and Greco Roman events to complement our traditional American folkstyle training.
Over the span of a few short months, I’d competed in more than twice as many matches as I had during my freshman campaign, and my performance level improved exponentially.
My training was also far more informed by this time. Every time a new issue of Amateur Wrestling News arrived, Dave and I would absorb its contents. It provided us with so many training tips and a wealth of nutritional knowledge. Dave would put his newfound knowledge to use as the team’s captain, and he would take the entire team through segments of its training regimen and lead by example. I hoped that I could one day follow in his footsteps in that respect.
Somehow, despite all the wrestling we were doing, Dave and I still had time to participate in other sports. Even though I was wrestling every weekend, I joined the track team, and I was desperate to earn a varsity letter in track. I participated in every event I could, but I kept getting beaten out in the 440-yard dash, the low hurdles, the high hurdle, the shotput, the long jump and the high jump. I even did the pole vault and cleared nine feet with a steel pole! Fiberglass poles were just coming into our high schools, but I exceeded the weight limit for it, which made the steel pole necessary.
Finally I asked the coach, point blank, “What do I have to do to get a varsity letter in track?”
“Well, the conference meet is coming up,” the coach said. “Why don’t you run the two-mile race? If you run it, and you do well, I’ll let you have a varsity letter.” I think he was being facetious, but that still meant it was “Game on” for me.
With a varsity letter on the line, I ran the two-mile event, and I beat almost all of our long-distance runners even though I was built more like a football player. We would run for twenty-minute intervals as a regular part of our wrestling training, and that prepared me well for a two-mile run.
I’d successfully earned my varsity letter in track, and once again I accomplished a goal in an unexpected way. It just taught me to look for further opportunities to challenge myself.
IN MY sophomore season, the results of our hard work quickly showed, and Dave and I both started to eat people up on the mat.
It’s worth noting that I was truly only a sophomore on paper. All of the wrestling I’d done outside of the high school season had provided me with an experience level on par with most high school seniors.
Dave was a regular workout partner of mine, because in wrestling it’s a standard practice to train with wrestlers one weight division above yours to develop power, and one weight division below yours to develop quickness.
However, if Dave got the better of me in practice, it would bruise my alpha-male ego. I didn’t like having to hang my head and tuck my tail between my legs, and sometimes I wouldn’t help him nearly as much as I should have when it came to performing household or farm chores.
There are certain rituals our wrestling team did as part of the hazing process, which were really all done in good fun. Incoming freshman would get what was known as the ‘heart massage’. We’d hold the freshmen down on their backs, rub our fists together like we were preparing the electrodes on a defibrillator, and then pound or thrust on their chests.
We also had a comical ritual called ‘the iron post’. If you were late to practice, a group of us would grab you, lift you up and hold your legs apart, then open the two doors to the practice room so that the center partition rod was exposed. Then we would crush your nuts on the iron post.
You didn’t want to be late to practice.
Don’t worry; we didn’t maim anybody, and I have five children as proof of that. Everyone was introduced to the iron post at one point or another.
Coach Casteel had a great, warped sense of humor. He was a great motivator who could make you believe in yourself. He was also such a large man that he couldn’t physically get out on the mat and show us any techniques. Coach would walk into the practice room, take his shoes off, lean his back against the wall, and then slide down into a seated position. That’s where he watched and instructed us from, and he always had a Diet Coke in his hand.
As part of our training, the wrestling team participated in what were called ‘idiot races’. For a solid hour, we would move across the gym floor doing bear crawls, towel slides, alternating fireman’s carries, and as many other crazy movements as we could think of.
As success came, so did attention. Dave and I both started to receive progressively more interest from college coaches.
During my sophomore year, Dave finished second at the 1974 state meet in the 167-pound weight division, and I placed by finishing fourth at 185 pounds, all while in the process of completing my season with thirty-four wins and six losses. In one year, I’d come a long way from being the guy who was expected to aid the cause of his team simply by not losing in the most devastating fashion.
Now I was the one Coach Casteel pointed at and said, “Severn, we need to get a pin from you.”
WHEN I made the varsity football team, they finally let us pick whatever numbers we wanted, but as a sophomore on the team, that meant I was one of the last to select a number.
By the time I got up to the front of the line with Coach Bob Hayes to pick my jersey, I was the very last to choose, and there were only half a dozen numbers left.
“What number do you want?” Coach asked.
“Give me a number no one ever wants,” I replied. “I’ll make the number mean something.”
During games, I never left the football field. I played offense, defense and special teams, and my brother was right there beside me. Not only were we the dynamic duo in wrestling, but we were also the dynamic duo in football.
On defense, Dave played linebacker, and I played in every one of the positions along the defensive front.
Dave stood right behind me and would ask me to blow a hole for him in the offensive line so he could take out the opposing quarterback or running back. However, my objective was to take out the guys blocking me and the guy with the ball, too, because I wanted the glory for myself! I didn’t want to punch holes in the line just so he could tackle people!
As teams started to realize how destructive we were, they would run their plays to the opposite side. Coach Hayes would see this, and he would give us the freedom to pick whichever side we wanted, because he saw the value in keeping our wrecking machine together. We made it very difficult for opposing teams to score on us.
By the time I was done playing football, a lot of guys wanted to wear the numbers I’d worn.
FOUR
DURING MY JUNIOR SEASON, I went undefeated with fifty-one victories, and I set a national pin record with forty-three pins. In truth, there was really only one person I didn’t pin over the course of the entire season. The rest of my unpinned opponents had to do injury defaults because they were getting hurt while trying to keep me at bay. That’s how aggressively I was going after my opponents and trying to pin them.
The universal weight machine at the Montrose Hill-McCloy High School provided me with the first official we
ight training I’d ever received. It was a four-sided, multi-station device with weight stacks and selector pins, which was pretty standard for high schools of the time. It wasn’t simply for the sports teams to use, either, because we had access to it as a regular accessory of our physical education classes.
During my freshman year, I simply couldn’t bench press 135 pounds on the machine, no matter how hard I strained. However, I trained on it five days per week, and the results soon came.
By the end of my junior season, I was performing bench press sets of ten repetitions at 315 pounds on the universal gym, which illustrates how greatly my strength improved during that four-year span.
These strength gains were also accelerated by our purchase of one of those cheap sets of free weights consisting of concrete covered in plastic. Lifting free weights forced me to work my major muscle groups while simultaneously working my stabilizer muscles. This eliminated the ability to cheat with the weight and helped me to develop strength much quicker. Also, when you were working with a free weight set, you always worked with a weight you could manage, because if you dropped the weight, which did happen at times, the plastic would split open and the concrete would start to crumble and leak out piece by piece. Duct tape to the rescue!
All of the added power I added from the weightlifting made my crossfaces, chicken wings, and cradles far more devastating. I’d truly turned into an alpha male.
Even though I had no clue I was amassing this pin record, Coach Casteel was fully aware of it, and he kept it a secret from me for the entire season. It wasn’t until after the record was set that he informed me of the mark and sent the information to Amateur Wrestling News… the same magazine I had been reading for the last three years. Now, I was going to be in it!
During the 1975 state championship meet of my junior season, my brother Dave went out and became the first state champion in the history of Montrose Hill-McCloy High School by beating his opponent on points to secure the 167-pound title. Watching my brother win a state championship was exciting, but it also drove me to win a championship of my own.
Afterward, I went out and won my own state championship in the 185-pound weight class by pinning my opponent in forty-four seconds.
I have to point out that my parents were right there with us the entire time. My brother and I were always qualifying for national tournaments in places like Oklahoma and Nebraska, and my father’s “vacations” from work were primarily spent shuttling us from one state to another for these competitions. My parents did whatever they could to make sure their children were successful.
By now, college coaches were starting to take notice of me. I wanted to draw more attention to myself, so I started looking for additional ways to get their attention in a way that would differentiate me from my brother, and also ways that would help me to stand out from other top recruits.
I finally figured out the perfect way to do it.
One day, I entered a tournament and competed simultaneously in both the junior age division and the open age division, in three different weight classes.
In addition to entering the 198-pound weight class, I also entered the 220-pound and heavyweight weight classes, figuring that there weren’t many heavyweights, and it would be nice to pick up another few matches.
I knew I was being crazy, but I really had nothing to lose, other than a few matches. If I lost, it was no big deal since what I was attempting was insane, but if I won, it would be a huge deal.
People became aware of what was happening when they realized how I would be actively participating in a match on one of the three mats, and my name would be called requesting that I report to a match on a different mat.
The announcer would come over the PA system and say, “Dan Severn, report to mat number two,” even though I was already wrestling someone on mat number one. When this happened, it meant I needed to hurry up and pin the guy I was wrestling against quickly just so that I could have enough time to get a short break, grab my duffle bag and water bottle, and walk out onto mat two before my next match started.
By this point, the clock might already be running, counting down the time before I had to participate in a match on mat number three. Once your name was announced to be on the mat to wrestle, you had five minutes to report before you would be disqualified for not showing up on time.
Some of the guys I was competing against in the open division were college wrestlers, or even some who had moved on from college. In some of these instances, I was giving up not only a lot of bodyweight to my opponents, but also a ton of age and experience.
Seventeen matches later, I walked out of the gymnasium with six gold medals. In my mind, I’d done the impossible, but from where I’d been a few years earlier, I was beginning to think I could always accomplish the impossible.
BETWEEN MY pin record, my exploits against multiple divisions and weight classes, my state championship win, and my placement in the national Greco Roman championship, I entered my senior wrestling season with a whole lot of eyes on me.
I was considered the most prized 185-pound wrestling recruit in the nation, and I was still growing physically. College coaches were drooling at the idea of having me on their teams, because I was certain to mature into the perfect 190-pound collegiate wrestler.
However, before I moved on to college, I still had some things to accomplish during my senior season, along with an undefeated streak to maintain.
In my mind, the only way I could top the exploits of my junior season was to pin everyone.
Quite literally, I wouldn’t be satisfied unless I pinned every single person I faced in the regulation season, district championships, regional championships, and everyone I faced leading right up to the state championship finals.
A perfect score in bowling is 300. You can’t do any better than that. However, in wrestling, there is really no such thing as having a perfect score. To me, this would mean you pinned everyone. To someone else, this may also mean you were never even taken down.
In short, a wrestler’s career is a pursuit of perfection that can never be attained. No one will ever pin everyone they ever face in their life. The best you can do is pin everyone you face over a defined stretch of time.
At the 1976 state wrestling championship meet, as I walked out onto the mat for the final match of my high school wrestling career, I was on pace to achieve my goal. The only thought going through my mind was, “I must win; I must pin; I must do it all in less than forty-four seconds.”
Most high schoolers just want to qualify for the state championships, and most would be elated if they could place at states, let alone have a chance to win. In my case, that wasn’t good enough. I needed to top what I’d accomplished in the previous year.
I hadn’t even been taken down once that year, but my opponent got one of the best jumps I’d ever seen. He must have been watching for the puff of the official’s cheeks knowing that the sound of the whistle would soon follow, because he was in on me lickety-split.
He took me down, but the instant I hit the ground, I exploded right back to my feet, went into a switch and got the reversal.
Over the course of my career, I’d become very good at the cradle. I was known as ‘The Baby Bull’ because I regularly bulldozed my opponents and then cradled them. At that moment, I slapped on the bulldozer cradle, put my opponent on his back and pinned him.
Immediately, I jumped up and looked at the clock; it showed forty seconds. I’d accomplished all of my high school wrestling goals.
When it was my turn to stand on the podium, the announcer made it a special moment.
“Folks, this is a special night, and here it goes,” he began.
He then began to read off all of my accomplishments and records, a lot of which were news to me, including most consecutive tournament victories, most consecutive pins, and most cumulative pins in two season. All in all, I’d set eight different national records, which was itself a national record that still stands to this day.
What made things even better was I got to share the night with my younger brother Mark, who had also become a state champion. In later years, two additional Severn brothers, Mike and Rod, would join the high school wrestling team at Montrose Hill-McCloy, and they would also win multiple state titles.
In total, the five Severn brothers would win ten individual state high school wrestling championships in Michigan, and I don’t know of another wrestling family that can claim to have had that sort of a dynasty in a single high school’s wrestling program.
In addition to athletic achievements, my generation also contributed to an upgrade in the Severn family’s level of education. My grandfather couldn’t read or write, and my father broke new ground in the Severn family by taking a few college classes. In the next generation, all eight Severn children earned college degrees.
It’s nice to have played just a small part of elevating the level of my family’s prestige and building a legacy we could all be proud of.
THE CHERRY on top of the sundae following my senior season of high school was that I went on that summer to win the 1976 national championships in both freestyle wrestling and Greco Roman wrestling.
At the national championship tournament, I also picked up the Most Outstanding Wrestler award. At that moment in my life, there was no higher level that I could have climbed to, and I had every college coach in the country trying to add me to his team’s roster.
All of the coaches I used to read about in the national wrestling magazines now had the phone ringing off the hook of our farmhouse wall. In the days before cell phones, this meant my parents had to answer phone calls from college coaches around the clock.
It was also staggering how many scholarship offers were coming in through the mail from wrestling programs all across the country. It was akin to the amount of mail that you’d expect a famous rockstar to get, except all of it was coming from collegiate wrestling programs.