| Andrew began his wrestling career at the age of 4 attending practices a couple days a week and local tournaments each year, but he did not have early success as a rookie, and in the words of Anita Bader, “we know you want him to be a wrestler, but we just aren’t so sure that that is going to happen,” but by age 7 “HE” decided that it was going to happen. He began his career by making bracket after bracket after bracket and creating many “home” tournaments with all the animals he could find. His love for bracket-making obviously was the way he mentally figured out how this sport worked, and from then on he began seeing more and more success—definitely not perfect success, and I do remember his coach Mark Bader (not Flo Mark Bader, but Ryan Bader—Nevada Wrestler and Bellator Champion’s—dad) saying with a little smile, “well it is a good thing he decided to finally wrestle in this third round,” as Andrew somehow walked away with the win. |
| Wrestling didn’t come easy to Andrew, and he seemed to always have to take the stairs, but he felt the taste of winning and decided that he liked that much better than losing—in fact, when Mark used to ask him to bump-up in weight or age when he was winning his brackets week after week, he said adamantly, “NO!” Well, eventually he did learn that winning wasn’t that fun when he didn’t have to work for it, and finally decided that he would take the lumps, and bump up. It was a good decision as, even though he didn’t take first every time, when he did start seeing those gold medals he knew it was because he worked for them. |
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| Andrew played three youth sports; Football, Baseball and Wrestling. In Middle School he played those three and added Basketball and Track, but when High School came around he had to choose, so he played Football for Reno High as a Linebacker and Full-back, and he wrestled. Wrestling was always his passion and is what he wanted to spend most of his time doing. Andrew is also a high-achieving student and took mostly all AP classes his Junior and Senior years, and was also part of the National “We the People” Class. |
| In Andrew’s wrestling career he won five USA Nevada Triple Crowns, and a few, what I liked to call, 2/3 Triple Crowns. That meant that he lost in one of the three styles, but also meant that he still ended up as the highest placer—which he liked. He never lost in Greco at the state level. Andrew also won USA Kids Western Regionals a few times which earned him some cool belt buckles, and he won USA Kids Nationals—twice in Greco and once in Freestyle as well. He had some good success in Fargo, and he is a 7 time All-American, placing in both Freestyle and Greco, but he became a Greco runner-up and a Greco National Champion. Andrew is also a two-time Runner Up and Three-time All-American at Virginia Beach Folkstyle Championships. He is a two-time Nevada State High School Runner-Up and a two-time State Champion. He is a Reno Worlds Champion, a Three-time Sierra Nevada Classic Champion and a Reno TOC High School Champion. |
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| Andrew was recruited to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York which is an Ivy League D-1 school—his academic fortitude and wrestling success is what allowed him this opportunity. Andrew took a grey-shirt Gap year his first year at Cornell which allowed him to focus on Greco while also gaining skills for College level wrestling. During this time Andrew made the USA Junior World Team and traveled to Trnava, Slovakia where he earned a Silver Medal for the United States. He saw good success at Cornell during his Freshman year where he made the podium by placing 8th at the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association, and Honorable Mention All-Ivy. |
| Due to his success of winning the Silver Medal, Andrew was granted the opportunity last year to take an Olympic Red Shirt from Cornell and focus on trying to make the Olympic Team. He again made a World Team, but this time at the U23 Senior level. He traveled to Budapest where he again competed for the USA, but had a tough bout and wasn’t able to medal. He continued competing at a few different Senior level Olympic qualifiers, but found out that competing at the top tier of wrestling is pretty tough. In December he needed to place 5th to qualify for the Olympic Trials, but ended up placing sixth, so again he realized that he has to continue taking the stairs. |
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| In January, due to an injury of another wrestler at Cornell, Andrew was asked to give-up his Olympic Red Shirt and come back onto the Cornell roster. Although he had been training only Greco for the past year, being the team-player that he is, he agreed and enrolled back in classes and began wrestling Folkstyle. That was tough, but he still had some success. He ended up getting pretty sick in February which put another snag in his season, and he was unable to compete in the EIWAs this year. In spite of everything he did end up making the Second-Team All-Ivy. He was about to compete again in the Last Chance Olympic Qualifier, but Covid happened and then everything got canceled, except for online classes, in which Andrew received all A’s—a little silver-lining amidst it all. Andrew has started back at Cornell this Fall, and hopefully wrestling will happen by Spring semester. Andrew is also still qualified and continuing his quest to make an Olympic Team in Greco for the 2020one Olympics. |
