Sean Carroll thought he had lost the most important thing in his life when the Syracuse wrestling program died March 3, 2001.

He’d wrestled since middle school, spending countless hours in the gym perfecting his moves. He developed a work ethic in high school that earned him the Most Dedicated Wrestler of the Year award his senior year, the same year he co-captained his high school squad.

But, in his high school career, Carroll never wrestled in the postseason.

So when he walked on to the Syracuse wrestling team last year as a junior, he aimed to take care of unfinished business and continue competing in the sport he lives for and loves.

More than a year later, with no SU wrestling program in sight, Carroll still finds a way to immerse himself in the sport. This time, he did it from the sidelines, helping his brother fulfill a goal they both shared — Ryan Carroll would wrestle in the state tournament. All season Ryan hadn’t been picked to make the state tournament, but with his big brother standing at his side, he finished second in the southeastern Pennsylvania region.

“I was mat-side for every match,” Sean Carroll said, “and it was a dream come true for him and me.’

Carroll traveled about 3,000 miles in February, making the four-hour trip home to Blue Bell, Pa., for five straight weekends. He saw his brother compete in all his postseason matches.

There’s more.

Carroll’s also coaching and introducing the sport to middle-school kids in Port Byron, a town 30 miles west of Syracuse.

‘What he did was amazing,’ Ryan Carroll said. ‘Every weekend he came and, because the sport came hard to him, he’s such a great coach. He’s had this unique way of coaching me and my friends on the sidelines, and I’m happy that’s what he’s doing at Port Byron.’

Ryan, an 18-year-old senior at Wissahickon High School in Blue Bell, can’t talk about his wrestling success this year without mentioning his brother. Thanks in part to Sean, Ryan will continue his wrestling career at Johns Hopkins this fall.

Ryan might have never taken up the sport, but he ditched basketball in favor of wrestling in middle school when he saw Sean compete in his first high school match.

‘My brother is always known for his conditioning,’ Ryan said. ‘He was trailing the match, and his opponent was trying to call an injury timeout. But there’s no sport like wrestling where you can beat a guy into submission like Sean did. My brother has as much guts as you can come by. But when I saw him do that, that really got me into wrestling, and we’ve been feeding off of each other ever since.’

Sometimes the feeding comes in the form of candy.

‘Right before our team’s regional semifinal — the match you have to win to get into states — he went out and bought 20 Hershey bars,’ said Ryan, who wrestles at 125 pounds and stands an inch smaller than his 5-foot-4-brother. ‘The tournament was held in Hershey, Pa. So my teammates and I won our matches and my brother had these Hershey bars that he gave to my teammate and the crowd. He ran up, gave me a big hug and then a Hershey bar.”

The weekend that Ryan qualified for the state tournament was the one-year anniversary of Carroll’s last match for Syracuse. After watching his older brother’s final match in college, Ryan recalls seeing Sean kiss the mat and run up to the stands to meet his family.

One year later, the family met the same way, only this time to celebrate Ryan’s win.

While Sean and Ryan always shared a competitive rivalry, there was no jealousy between the two when Ryan reached the state championships, the boys’ father said.

‘As far as I know, there was no jealousy,’ Mark Carroll said. ‘There could be some because it’s human nature. But (Sean) didn’t give into that. The relationship between Sean and Ryan has always been close. Sean made some significant efforts to come down to cheer him and coach him. That’s a great character trait of his.’

One that’s continued at Port Byron Middle School. Sean Carroll, along with former SU wrestling teammate Brett Cowen, served as an assistant coach during the fall and winter.

Each day, Carroll and Cowan commuted to and from Port Byron, a town of just 1,535. The opportunity to coach was a way to stay near the sport, Carroll said.

While Carroll and Cowan came from competitive high school programs in Pennsylvania, their mentality and objective at Port Byron was different.

‘The idea was to keep the kids interested in the sport and the head coach brought us in,’ Carroll said. ‘ ‘Here’s two SU guys that wrestled, come on out and let’s see what they have to offer.’ We knew we had a huge mountain to climb. But we said to them, ‘Listen to us. You’re going to lose some matches, but if you keeping doing things the way we tell you to do it, you’re going to win.’ ‘

By the end of the season, every kid on the team had a win.

Coaching, though, was also a learning experience for Carroll. He had to report to athletic directors, answer to head coaches and meet with wrestlers. Despite the rigmarole of the job, Carroll enjoyed working at Port Byron. Being a coach reminded Carroll of his coach from last year, Scott Miller, who Carroll still keeps in touch with through Instant Messenger.

‘He followed my brother wrestling through the postseason as closely as I did,’ Carroll said. ‘I mean, he was more than 3,000 miles away in Washington, and I’d be home on a Monday and something would pop up: ‘Hey how’d he do this weekend? How’d the match go? What moves did he hit well?’ He’s somebody I’d be in touch with forever.’

Not a day goes by when Carroll doesn’t think about last year’s wrestling experience.

‘Whether it’s matches I wrestled or practices I went to,” Carroll said, “I can’t walk into Archbold Gym without thinking that I used to go here everyday for practice. (Wrestling) will be with me forever.”

Published on April 24, 2002 at 12:00 pm