John Jeffire: A Wrestling Life

John Jeffire: A Wrestling Life

Nick Corey

Seemingly small acts can loom larger with the passage of time. Today I’m thinking of one from over two decades ago. Here’s to hoping delayed gratitude still counts.

New students filing into John Jeffire’s class at Chippewa Valley High School in Clinton Township, Michigan, probably don’t realize the Renaissance Man their teacher happens to be.

Jeffire wouldn’t say this himself, but it’s true.

He was a college wrestler at Saint Lawrence University in Canton, NY. He’s competed and coached overseas. He’s a voracious reader, a political junkie and an accomplished writer and poet. One of his novels, Motown Burning, was named Grand Prize Winner in the Mount Arrowsmith Novel Competition. In 2007, it won a Gold Medal for Regional Fiction in the Independent Publishing Awards.

Also, Jeffire was head coach of a national title-winning college wrestling team in 1995.

Three decades ago, Jeffire’s parents ran a bar in Findlay, Ohio — home of the Hancock County Fair, the Flag City BalloonFest and Ben Roethlisberger. Twenty-something John met and chatted up patrons. Kurt Leonard, a young, local newspaper writer, was one.

“We hit it off,” Leonard said. “We had a lot of common interests. Music, literature, talking politics…”

He paused.

“Beer?” I asked.

“Possibly,” Leonard laughed. “That may have been part of it.”

“Also, we’d wrestled in college. We both loved the sport.”

It was the late 1980s. Jeffire was an assistant coach at the University of Findlay. Shortly after, he was named the Oilers’ head coach. Asking Leonard to be his assistant was a no-brainer.

Leonard marveled at his friend’s caviar dreams despite their tuna-can budget. He recalls Jeffire perpetually talking of turning Findlay into a small college wrestling power.

“He always had big dreams for the program,” Leonard said. “One of John’s greatest assets was he knew he didn’t know everything. He was interested in finding out how other programs did things. He’d listen to others.”

Jeffire and Leonard endured the bumpy, bond-forging road together. From inheriting a team of six wrestlers to the crowning culmination of an NAIA national team title five years later, both toiled alongside the other because, according to Leonard, “it’s all we knew.”

(Pictured: John Jeffire, Miron Kharchilava, Kurt Leonard)

How good did Findlay become during Jeffire’s tenure? One indicator might be how Findlay fared against larger, more-amply funded programs.

“Our big meets were with Ohio State, Minnesota, and Nebraska,” Jeffire said. “We beat Kent State, Northern Illinois, Illinois State, Cleveland State, and Marquette.”

Led by their undefeated 167-pound national champion, Miron Kharchilava (father of current Ohio State wrestler Carson Kharchla), the title earned in 1995 remains Findlay’s only wrestling national championship.

“Kurt and I started with six guys on the roster,” Jeffire said. “The program went from the verge of being dropped, (to) not having enough mats to train on, or singlets or headgear to wear.

“We figured it out as we went and just kept building.”

If sports are metaphors for life, Jeffire’s run at Findlay serves as Exhibit A. After sowing seeds of sweat, late nights and countless travel-by-van road trips, the fruit harvested in March, 1995 was sweetly rewarding. In addition to the team crown, Jeffire was voted the NAIA National Coach of the Year.

However, as championship moments are euphoric, they’re fleeting, too — brief, luminous comets through the life-skies of a fortunate few.

Jeffire was only 32 when Findlay won the title. Many years — and circumstances — awaited.

He stayed two more years at Findlay, coached a year in high school and returned to the collegiate ranks at Eastern Michigan University. After two years at EMU, he left college coaching, became a high school English teacher and when time permitted, worked with various wrestlers from southern Michigan.

Soon, time wouldn’t permit much.

Jeffire’s son, Jake, became an Airborne Ranger in the Army. His daughter, Lea, would struggle with mental health issues and drug addiction.

Lea’s been sober for a year. When talking about his daughter, Jeffire’s voice is equal parts pride and a tentative hope familiar to those with a loved one in recovery.

A son or daughter serving overseas is enough cause for occasional insomnia. The same can be said for any parent praying that a child’s sobriety — this time — lasts. Jeffire lives with both.

He lives with this, too:

His wife, Konnie, has Chiari Malformation, a debilitating condition caused by the brain slipping into the spinal column.

I first spoke with John about the idea for this story a month and a half ago. He was warm, engaging, relaxed and irreverent. He abruptly ended the conversation.

“Sorry Nick,” he said. “Gotta run. I’ll call you back.”

He later shared that Konnie had started vomiting, a common manifestation of her condition.

“She’s endured so much,” Jeffire said. “The back of her skull was removed; now there’s titanium housing. That helped arrest the descent of her brain.

“But there’s no cure. The symptoms take over your life.”

Symptoms include bouts of vomiting, sleeping up to 20 hours a day, being bed-bound and severe atrophy of muscle tissue.

“She has a walker,” Jeffire said. “On good days, she can make it to the bathroom and kitchen.”

He hopes sharing his wife’s struggles increases awareness of Chiari Malformation, paving the way for needed research funding.

“There’s not enough,” he said. “Most people don’t even know about this disease.”

Why’d I decide to write about John Jeffire?

Words fall short. He was Findlay’s coach when I was in college. I battled with his grapplers six or seven different times. The last match of my career was against one of his wrestlers, Kelly Stevens, in the bloodround of Nationals.

I win, I’m an All-American. I lose, my career is finished.

I lost. I’d love to say I was hosed by a BS call; I wish I could present a litany of other excuses. I can’t. Stevens was just better.

Crushed by the double-whammy of coming within a match of the podium and knowing future chances were gone, I found an area.

It’s a thing. After certain, stinging defeats, wrestlers always find an area.

Perhaps a half hour passed. Maybe it was an hour. I’m not sure.

I know that at a certain point, Jeffire happened to see me. He walked over, offering his hand and some heartfelt words. Two and a half decades later, I still remember.

In our final conversation for this piece, Jeffire thanked me.

Nope. I’m 25 years late. Thank you, Coach.