Wirfs, champion heavyweight, shaped by wrestling

Editor's note: Seventh in an eight-part series about Iowa offensive tackle Tristan Wirfs, who grew up in and left his mark on Mount Vernon. Many in the small Eastern Iowa town left marks on him, too.

MOUNT VERNON - The drop ceiling in the Mount Vernon wrestling room measures around eight feet from mat to someone's head going through the drop ceiling.

Or their feet scraping that poor, poor drop ceiling.

Iowa offensive lineman Tristan Wirfs is 6-foot-5. That math was never going to work.

Aaron Truitt is the assistant wrestling coach at Mount Vernon, under head coach Vance Light. Light won two state titles for Lisbon in the 1980s. He won those at 112 and 119 pounds. Truitt weighs in around 230.

So, guess who got to wrestle with Wirfs on a regular basis?

'My wife wasn't real excited,” Truitt said. 'We had an eight-foot drop-ceiling in the wrestling room. Twice, he threw my head through the ceiling tiles. He was so tall and he'd lift me so high.

'Once my head hit the tiles and another time my feet hit them when he threw me.”

This also happened to Matt Kroul.

Let's try that again. This also happened to Matt Kroul. You remember Kroul. He was a four-year starter at defensive tackle for the Hawkeyes. He played three seasons with the New York Jets.

'I had a similar experience,” Kroul said with a laugh.

Football always was going to find Wirfs, but wrestling was something very different.

He jumped into it to be with his friends, but wrestling does things to big bodies, especially if that big body is relatively new to the sport.

'He didn't have the confidence when he was young,” Light said. 'He would always look at how big the other heavyweights were. He thought they were huge. When he was a freshman, he was 6-1 and around 245 pounds, so it wasn't like he was little. He didn't see himself as measuring up to their size.”

With anything Wirfs and sports and the early years, you already know what stood in front of him.

'There's a reason he struggled as a freshman,” Light said. 'Growing up, he was so much bigger than everyone else. Everyone always told him be careful, don't hurt anybody. When you get to freshman wrestling, it's ‘Why are you playing paddycake?' He had to retrain his thought process on his physicality when he got to high school.”

You could argue that is exactly what happened during Wirfs' four years as a Mount Vernon wrestler.

Wirfs was a freshman asked to wrestle heavyweight. Of course, he struggled.

'He came out and worked hard and decided he wanted to wrestle varsity, but he really struggled,” Truitt said.

'I think if you look at pictures of me during my freshman wrestling season, I looked funny,” Wirfs said.

Josh Cannon, who wrestled 220 pounds as a senior when Wirfs was a freshman, can verify this.

'As a freshman, he still had a little of ... I don't want to say pudge, but he had a little bit of pudge on him,” Cannon said.

Truitt kept wrestling fun and that kept Wirfs in it. Truitt kind of saw maybe where this was going.

So, for Wirfs' senior year, Truitt found a couple of practice partners for Wirfs.

'I recruited a couple old Mount Vernon guys - Matt Kroul, obviously you know Matt, and Justin Dix (a former Mount Vernon assistant wrestling coach),” Truitt said. 'They traded off Mondays and Tuesdays. One of them would be in there on Monday and Tuesday to work out with Tristan. I had him Wednesdays and Fridays.”

Friday was more match prep, but Wednesday.

'He would throw me around,” Truitt said.

'I got a job working (at the Mount Vernon Bank and Trust Company) with the stipulation that I could coach some wrestling,” Dix said. 'Dave (Ryan, the bank president and, well, you have to keep reading) was on board with that.

'I've just been a lifelong wrestling guy. I love wrestling and (Wirfs) was an easy guy to want to help. Great attitude. He'd get done with a practice that he didn't enjoy and he'd come up and say thank you and shake your hand. You know he didn't want you to be there, but deep down he knew it would be the best for him.”

Dix wasn't the 'teacher,” that was Truitt. Dix was a big body who got Wirfs' attention the way only a few of his teammates could.

'Our biggest challenge was to get him to be mean. He was just such a good guy,” Dix said. 'I could just feel, ‘Oh, my god, here comes this guy in here. I don't want to hurt him.' ”

The only way to figure it out - and it's the same way it worked with Matt Kroul - you just had to start brawling with them and before you knew it, they got the idea.”

Kroul, along with the aforementioned football resume, won a state heavyweight title for Mount Vernon in 2004.

He was around 30 when Truitt gave him a call to come in and wrestle with Wirfs. Kroul had a clear mission: Agitate.

'My job was to try to get him to flip the trigger every once in awhile,” Kroul said. 'So, I wouldn't dirty wrestle, but I'd do a little thing in a front headlock or, you know, do a thing to the clavicle if he wasn't moving on the bottom.”

Finally ...

'It triggered one day,” Kroul said. 'He shot a double and lifted me up and my feet hit the top of the ceiling. I said, ‘OK, you need to do that every time you're wrestling and every minute that you're out here. There's no reason why that can't happen every time.'”

Wirfs got bigger. Wirfs got better.

'By the time he was a senior, I still think I could beat him in a wrestling match, but I really had to watch out for that blast double of his,” Cannon said. 'He just had a killer double leg and he could blast it off at any moment. I think he knocked the wind out of me a couple of times.”

This also is the story of the toughest kid in Mount Vernon's 2017 graduating class.

'Oh for sure,” Dix said. 'I don't think Tristan would even argue that.”

So, remember 'Dave” from above, with Dix's story?

That's Dave Ryan. He is the president at Mount Vernon Bank and Trust Co. Ryan also guided Mount Vernon's kids wrestling program (first through sixth grade) for the better part of 20 years.

Tristan Wirfs went through the program in grades first through third.

'He was all smiles and very coachable,” Ryan said. 'He was also very tall, and big all over. Big feet. And he was always wearing basketball clothing, which drove me nuts.”

Dave's daughter, Libby, also was in there. Something about rambunctiousness, Ryan said.

Wirfs trampled everyone.

'It wasn't necessarily because of his wrestling prowess, but due to his sheer size, strength and quickness,” Dave Ryan said. 'I recall he was quick for his size. Things finally got to the point where we couldn't find him a consistent partner. Kids started shying away from him. I didn't want him to get discouraged. Kids sports are supposed to be fun.”

Enter Libby.

'Enter Libby,” Dave said.

It was on.

'As memory serves me, she may have got the best of him a few times, but I think he may have also returned the favor,” Dave Ryan said.

Kids wrestling is supposed to be fun. Well, Libby Ryan took over the room.

'She also got the best of most every boy in the room,” Dave Ryan said, 'so much so that other kids shied away from her also. So, Tristan and Libby were kind of stuck with each other from time to time in the wrestling room.”

This didn't last long. Libby was so dominant that participation started to slide.

'Libby terrorized everyone and he told her she couldn't come in anymore,” Dix said. 'Not for Libby's sake, but for participation.”