An Almost-Olympic Memory

Crushing defeats are a part of life. To heal, sometimes only family will do.

Twenty years ago, Terry Brands and Kerry Boumans shared more than rhyming names. They shared the same dream: the 58 kg. spot on the 2000 U.S. Olympic Team.

For Boumans, it began decades earlier. The United States’ men’s hockey team had shocked the world by defeating Russia in the 1980 Winter Olympics. The “Miracle on Ice” left Americans galvanized and proud.

Boumans was only nine, but he remembers.

“I know it sounds cliche, but that’s what started it, what inspired me,” Boumans said. “I watched it happen and remember thinking, ‘I wanna do that.’ I didn’t know how, but that didn’t matter.

“From then on, I knew I wanted to be in the Olympics.”

Since durable, unfettered hope is one of childhood’s blessings, Boumans’ dream didn’t wither. Still, six years passed before finding a sport that fit.

As a freshman at Comeaux High School in Lafayette, Louisiana, Boumans played football.

“I weighed 83 pounds,” Boumans said.

When the season ended, coach Don Gagnard spat truth at his diminutive gridder.

“He said football wasn’t in my future.”

Gagnard was also the wrestling coach. He suggested Boumans come out for the team.

Blessed with speed and a sponge-like knack for absorbing and learning new techniques, Boumans blossomed. He finished seventh in the state his first year, then won three consecutive state titles.

“I was naive, but blessed to be naive,” Boumans said. “I wouldn’t worry. I’d just get after it. For whatever reason, I could hang with guys who’d been wrestling longer than me.

“God put a lot of good people in my life, too.”

Like wrestling pal Chris Guillot.

“Louisiana wasn’t like other (wrestling rich) states; Chris and I were basically Team Louisiana,” Boumans laughed. “Each summer we’d look for everything we could find, tougher competition. We’d travel anywhere to get better.”

Despite three state titles, Boumans’ went largely unrecruited. Only one school expressed interest.

Milo Trusty was coach at the University of Mary, an NAIA school in Bismarck, ND. Trusty saw Boumans wrestle at a summer tournament in Florida.

“I saw him the summer after his freshman year,” Trusty said. “I walked up and told him, ‘I really like watching you.’ He was incredibly fast, incredibly tough.

“We talked. You quickly realize what a great person Kerry is when you just talk with him. I found out he’d only wrestled one year, and I knew I wanted him from that point on.”

Boumans’ sights, however, were on the bigger stages of Division I college wrestling.

“After his third state title, Kerry sent letters to twenty D1 schools to see if anyone was interested,” Trusty said. “He got no response. One day he called me and said, ‘You still want me?’

“And I did.”

Boumans didn’t disappoint. He was a four-time All-American and two-time national champion. Four years before Mitch Clark accomplished the feat at the 1998 D1 championships in Cleveland, Boumans teched his opponent in the national finals in the first period.

A few years after graduating, Boumans — heading for the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs — needed money.

“I told him I was about to build a deck and I’d pay him to help me,” Trusty said.

“I’ll never forget it. Kerry still wanted his workouts, so each day after finishing our work, we’d pull mats out and throw them down in my horse pasture.

“We’d wrestle on mats in a horse pasture because Kerry needed to get his workout in.

“That’s how Kerry is.”

Wrestling for the Dave Schultz Wrestling Club, Boumans won gold at the U.S. Open, the World Cup, and the Dave Schultz International. Training at the Olympic Training Center, Boumans’ confidence grew.

“Getting to wrestle (each day) with the best, getting to work with coaches like Coach (Bruce) Burnett, it opened my eyes,” he said. “It brought my wrestling to another level.”

On June 24, 2000, Boumans’ aspirations culminated at the Olympic trials in Dallas.

He’d made the finals. One more opponent to get through, and his unrelinquished, twenty year-old dream would reach fruition.

It wouldn’t be easy.

In 1996, Terry Brands, his multiple national and world titles in tow, was a veritable shoe-in for the U.S. Olympic Team. Kendall Cross stunned Brands — and most of the wrestling world — by winning their Trials’ best-of-three series final. Cross won gold in Atlanta.

Four years later, the 32 year-old Brands forged a much-buzzed-about comeback and reached the Trials’ finals again. This time, Boumans stood in his way.

In two epic battles decided in the final seconds, Brands prevailed. On the doorstep of his childhood dream, Boumans’ hopes were dashed.

“I still think about it today,” Boumans said. “Not in a despair or ‘woe is me’ way…I remember hurting, physically in my chest. It wasn’t pain from the matches, but realizing something so close to me, for so long, was now gone.”

After spending “maybe an hour” alone after the loss, Boumans found his family.

“I remember breaking down,” he said. “My wife, my mom, my two sisters — they just hugged me.

“They were the best hugs I’ve ever received.”

Today, Boumans lives in Napierville, Illinois. He makes a living servicing garage doors, only occasionally working wrestling camps. To the degree being the father of six allows, Boumans prefers relaxing with his wife Terri — a former Penn State and U.S. National Volleyball Team member — and their kids.

For Boumans, family is now life. Fatherhood has provided salve to his Olympic-sized letdown.

“I’ve never felt a rush like the second my kids were born,” Boumans said. “And it was the same for all six children. I cried like a baby.

“The greatest thing about watching them grow is knowing there’s a story being written. My wife and I get to live it with them.”

Compared with other American wrestlers of the era — Baumgartner, Slay, Henson, Kolat, McIlravy, McCoy, both Brands brothers — Boumans’ name isn’t widely known. Wrestling for an NAIA college is part of the reason. Not making an Olympic team is, too.

But, those who know, know.

Nebraska coach Mark Manning and Oklahoma Regional Training Center coach Eric Guerrero remember Boumans well.

“They were incredible battles,” Manning said of Boumans’ final bouts with Brands.

As one of Brands’ matside coaches at the Trials, Manning would know.

“Kerry showed himself in those two matches — showed how tough he was. Great shape, strong. He challenged Terry in every aspect.

“Keep in mind how tough Terry was,” Manning said. “Always well-prepared, always geared up. Kerry met the challenge. He lost on paper, but not on effort. Kerry pushed Terry to the limit.”

“Kerry was such a competitor,” said three-time NCAA champion and 2004 U.S. Olympian, Eric Guerrero. “Some of my most memorable domestic battles involved Kerry.”

Though any resume featuring wins over Mark Ironside, Yero Washington, Danny Felix, Cody Sanderson and Eric Guerrero belongs with the era’s elite, Boumans abides in relative anonymity among casual fans. He doesn’t mind.

“(Recognition) is nice,” he said. “It’s not important.”

These days, a four year-old’s bathtime concerns him more.