My role in the Thompson wrestling dynasty

Almost anybody who has followed amateur wrestling in northeastern Iowa during the last 40 years knows of the Thompson family from Janesville.  Tom Thompson, whose wife Shirlee was our office manager for 16 years, was the first of the Thompson wrestlers.

Nobody who follows amateur wrestling would ever guess that I could possibly have been a part of the Thompson Wrestling Dynasty.

Probably the most famous has been Tolly Thompson, who ranked in the top four or five in the world for a number of years in the late 1990's and early 2000's.

But the dynasty started with his uncle, Tom Thompson, and that is where I come in.  Wrestling was started in Janesville High School in the fall of 1958.  I was a junior that year and decided to try wrestling.  Tom was a sophomore.  Bob Hall was the coach.  Things got off to a pretty good start and it became apparent quickly that I was not going to be a star wrestler. 

In fact during my two year career as a wrestler, I got to wrestle in a varsity meet maybe two or three times.  Coach Hall's admonishment to me was "Borglum, try not to get pinned" so we would not lose as many points as if I merely lost my match.

So how, you ask, could I have become a part of the Thompson Wrestling Dynasty?

In the wrestling room, wrestlers had work-out partners in their same general weight and/or skill level category.  I was in the same general weight category as Tom, though hardly in his skill category.  But I was often his first work-out partner, as he started to warm up.  After two or three minutes, he would move on to someone with more skill than I had.


Does that make me part of the beginning?  Hardly!!  And I don't really claim even a miniscule part of  the credit.  I only happened to be there at the beginning.

The credit belongs to the Thompson family; their basic natural abilities and even more importantly their willingness to work hard to achieve success.

Tom was a state wrestling champion his senior year of high school (1961), the first of many Thompson state championships. Janesville had another state champ that year too, Stan Saunders.  Tom set the bar high for all the Thompsons who followed him.

 
Tolly graduated from Janesville High School a number of years later.  Instead of following his dad, Leonard, to Iowa State, he went farther west to the University of Nebraska, where he was an NCAA Champion. 

Following a very successful college career at Nebraska, Tolly competed for several years at the world level and was one win away from an Olympic berth in 2004.  His hard work was legendary.  Tolly's mother was part of our office staff for a number of years, until her untimely death from cancer.  One morning she came to work and told the story of Tolly arriving for a short visit just a couple of days after finishing third in a world meet in one of the eastern European countries.  She suggested that he take a few days off.  His response: "Oh no Mom, it just means I have to work even harder."

Success takes hard work!

Following Tom were several brothers and then sons of Tom and his brothers.  There have been other champions in both high school and college. 

See career highlights for Tolly here
Here is a little more.