Bowyer wrestles with brother's loss, learns new ways to win

Jefferson Forest 160-pound senior Josh Bowyer still grapples with the death of his older brother Chris, a former football and wrestling standout at JF who took his own life the summer before his freshman year at Virginia Tech in 2008.

But rather than dwelling on the loss of his only sibling, he’s kept it in perspective, using it as motivation.

"It kind of influenced me to keep going more than it did anything," said Bowyer, who plans to enroll at Tech next year. "It just kind of influenced me to want to try harder ... kind of like in his memory. It kind of made me wrestle in the offseason more."

Josh has no plans to continue his wrestling career at the collegiate level, but he wants to make the most of his senior season with the Cavaliers, as Chris did, advancing to the Group AA state championship match before dropping a 5-3 decision to Grafton’s Chase Ennis.

"I’d like to go for first place," said Bowyer, who is ranked fifth in the state among Group AA 160-pounders.

His only two losses have come against the state’s first- and fourth-ranked wrestlers — Staunton River’s Chris Tyree, who has since bumped up to 170, and Fauquier County’s Seth Baker, respectively.

JF coach Hutch Hutchinson said he believes Bowyer’s got the technical ability and mental dexterity needed to contend for a state title.

"We call it mat awareness," he said. "He’s got the best of anybody we’ve had or seen at JF in a long time. Along with his body mechanics, he’s got great awareness of where he is and what’s going on. He can work out of a potentially bad situation and turn it around into a scoring situation, and he never panics, never gets nervous. He’s always got control out there."

Bowyer has a flair for the dramatic, often coming from behind to win late in a match.

"He’s been that way ever since he was a freshman," Hutchinson said. "He wins a whole lot of matches going into the third period, because of his conditioning."

He also has a knack for finding ways to finish his opponents off by fall.

"Josh is a pinner," Hutchinson said. "We like to be a pinning team. The more pins you get, it makes it more exciting and fun for the kids and you get more points out of it."

Like Chris, Josh used to play football, but he gave up that sport to specialize in wrestling, which he competes in year-round through the Forest Diamondbacks, a club organization coordinated by Hutchinson.

"Josh is a completely different kid than Chris was," Hutchinson said. "Josh is his own guy. He never, even when Chris was around, lived in Chris’ shadow."

But he did take his advice, when it was offered.

"I played football from the time I was a little kid up to my freshman year," Bowyer said. "[Chris] said if I was to focus only on wrestling that he would support me. He was more into football than I was and he really understood I liked wrestling better and I could really go far if I wanted to."

Bowyer has come into his own in the sport over the past three seasons, qualifying for the Group AA state tournament as a sophomore and placing seventh at last year’s event, held at the Salem Civic Center.

"Josh has always been a good wrestler," Hutchinson said. "But he never really wanted to be a good wrestler. Josh wanted to be a great wrestler. Josh could have been a really good football player, too. He’s a great athlete."

So far this season, Bowyer is 29-2 after going 4-0 with three pins in last Friday and Saturday’s Bulldog Invitational hosted by VIS Division I power Liberty Christian Academy. The Cavaliers edged LCA by two points, 211.5 to 209.5, to defend their tournament championship when fellow senior Eric Wellman won his 195-pound third-place match by first-period pin.

Bowyer wrestled a familiar opponent in his final — Martinsville’s Herman Jones, ranked sixth in the state. He beat Jones 7-3 in last year’s seventh-place bout at the state meet after losing to him at Martinsville and now has pinned him twice this season.

"Josh has just completely dominated him this year," Hutchinson said. "The guy came out at about 100 mph and Josh weathered the storm and in the third period, turned him on his back. We thought he was going to pass out. The kid was spent. Josh broke him."

A two-month stoppage from wrestling, following an injury at a freestyle tournament in Richmond last May, gave Bowyer the time he needed to recuperate and get mentally and physically ready for his senior season.

"I was wrestling a kid and he picked me up and I landed on my fist and it snapped bones in the middle of my hand," Bowyer said, noting he couldn’t get back to weight training for six weeks or on the wrestling mat for eight. "I’d kind of been wrestling all year round and I was worn out from doing it. I think it relieved me a little bit of certain pressures and gave me a little break to rest."

He started working with Forest assistant coach Randy Horning again by late summer and through the fall, steadily regaining his strength and endurance and picking up new moves.

"I feel like my technique’s a whole lot better and I’m better at pinning combinations, mostly," said Bowyer, who has sharpened his skills by sparring with senior teammates Caleb Prather (ranked seventh in the state at 145) and Forrest Speake (ranked eighth at 152).

"All three of those guys are really good friends and they push each other really hard," Hutchinson said. "They’ve worked out year-round."

On Saturday, Bowyer put Jones away by tricking him into a cradle and rocking his back to the mat.

"I acted like I was using my signature move and I switched to a cradle as he was trying to block me from getting my move," Bowyer said, referring to the Bowyer Bundle, a nickname for a pin maneuver he learned from Horning. "Randy taught that to us our freshman year and I just picked it up really fast. I was pretty much the only one using it in the matches so they just named it after me."

"Randy makes up names of moves so when we say stuff [from the coaches’ corner] our kids know what we’re talking about but no one else does," Hutchinson added. "The goal of each kid is to have a move named after him."

He said Bowyer hopes to leave a legacy at JF not only on the wrestling mat, but in the classroom as well, and use his education as a means to pursue his dreams.

"Josh is extremely smart," Hutchinson said. "He’s got a 4.3 GPA. He loves the outdoors, loves animals and has been accepted to the Virginia Tech veterinary program. He’s going to go ahead and pursue that instead [of wrestling at a smaller school.]

"He loves wrestling and wrestling has been really good to him, but wrestling is not his life," he added. "There’s more important things than wrestling to him. School’s one of them and family’s one of them."

Bowyer, his parents Martin and Wanda and classmates and staff at JF endured Chris’ death and have tried to move on.

"It was devastating for him, for the whole family, for the wrestling coaches and football coaches [at JF]," said Hutchinson, who works in the emergency room at Lynchburg General Hospital. "We survived. What are you going to do? You can’t just roll over and stop."

He believes Josh has emerged from the tragedy tougher and more determined than before, as he’s manifested on the mat.

"He was a strong person before that, but now he’s just super-strong," Hutchinson said. "He’s a tough kid mentally and that helps him to wrestle. You’re not going to beat him [by out-thinking him]. He’s so smart."

Note:

JF had Wednesday night’s Seminole District tri-match against Amherst and Rustburg postponed due to a mild outbreak of skin disease. Its next scheduled competition is the Marine Corps Wrestling Invitational, a dual meet tournament hosted by Brookville on Jan. 21.