I am going to talk about Dan Vallimont here and talk about Cyler Sanderson next time, as I want people to be aware of the journey these two guys took to get to where they have gotten, and I think I have another perspective on both that may not be obvious to the average fan.
I have always been as fascinated with what it takes to get someplace as much as where one winds up. And how that person reacts says something about him/her. This constant exchange between people goes on without anyone even knowing about it until one day they stop and say, heh, that person said or did that, and look what happened.
So I am going to say a couple of things about here about Dan Vallimont that perhaps you have not thought about. But since they are coming from what I am looking at, this has to be set up a bit.
I have searched through the wrestling rosters of all schools offering meteorology for years to see if a degreed meteorologist has ever lettered in the sport and have found none. This vainglorious exercise on my part is the dumbed-down version of what the Dolphins do every year in their celebration of no team going 17-0, but it’s also to say meteorology is a darn hard curriculum and it’s hard to do both.
Truth is I probably would not have made it through here in meteorology if I did not start wrestling again here, because it quickly brought back the discipline I had when I was living with my parents, and my grades shot up.
There was someone by the way, that had the needed love of the weather to do this, and he was a much better wrestler than me. Skip Pighetti, a heavyweight here several years ago, and Bald Eagle High grad, had the kind of love for the weather that I think would have driven him through the major, but he decided to go into education, and that is probably a loss for my field. Skip, like me, is married to an ex-Penn State gymnast. We could have started our own club.
Now let me say this: Dan Vallimont placing as the runner-up in nationals is a huge accomplishment. Dan Vallimont, placing as the runner-up in the nationals and majoring in architectural engineering to me is about as extreme an accomplishment as I have seen around here in a long time.
To look at this the way I do, you have had to know about Bob Hersch, who was on the team for a while in the mid 1970s. Bob was a tough Lehigh Valley wrestler. Solid, though not spectacular, but I could never beat him, or even be close. We were drilling partners and would drill every day at noon. At the time I was up at 177 or 190, so there was no animosity about going after the same position.
One day, my second year on the team, when Bob probably had the inside track at 167, I walked into the locker room to drill with him, and he was in front of his locker crying. He got up and starting hugging me. I thought his fiancé or parents had died. I didn’t know what to say or do. He told me he had to quit. He had to keep his grades up in his major, or he could not move on in engineering. Bob could not afford getting under a 3.8.
But this floored me, and it still does, ’cause I have not seen Bob since college but I think of him all the time, and pray he is doing well. But had he not quit, I would have never gotten into the lineup, ’cause he would have been around my senior year when I did, and it would have changed the pecking order in the upper weight classes.
But now think about what I see when I look at Vallimont. I can’t believe it, ’cause I know how tough Hersch was, and how hard engineering is, and its doubly hard ’cause you have to really stay up near the top. So I am looking at Vallimont through the prism of knowing this story, and if you do too, just doing what he had done up to this year is a very extreme event. Like most great people, he probably doesn’t see it that way, but years down the line, when he puts them both together in relation to the overall sport and who has done what, he will.
In addition, though I have only spoken with Dan a couple of times, I know he had to fight his way through a lower back problem. Having your lower back hurt is horrible since it means your ability to project power is diminished. You can be hurt somewhere else worse and overcome it, but a bad back, that is the link that is needed to make the body function as a wrestler. So he was his busting tail with that.
I knew he was going to do great when I saw him about a week out in practice. He was on fire in the room; he had turned into a machine. In fact, I went home and told my wife about how tough Vallimont was looking and how he could win it all. Jess can be a bit sarcastic and she made some comment about how he must be doing good ’cause ‘all you talk about is how good Cael and Casey are and how they are so tough,’ so she knew Dan was peaking too.
But folks, what Vallimont did, and I don’t mean to downplay winning it all, in placing this high, while being in the major he was in, is hard for me to comprehend because of what I know. If it were weather, it would be as extreme an event as the winter that much of the nation just had, or the 2005 hurricane season. A huge deviation from average! You do this sport, and major in architectural engineering and letter, yet alone place second and become a two-time All American, you have my attention and admiration Sometimes, the length or toughness of a journey may have more meaning than the end of it.
Coaches Casey Cunningham and Troy Letters should be proud, as they did a lot of work with Dan since he could not practice with the team, as he had class when they practiced.
And by his performance on the mat and in school, he shows he has class all the time.
Note: The women’s gymnastics regionals are here Saturday, April 10 at 6 pm. Let’s get a big Penn State crowd out at Rec hall.
