Tod Surmon—the assistant wrestling coach who brought me, a fellow Oregon guy, to Stanford—was endlessly buoyant. He could do a ten-and-ten—10 sprints up and down Stanford Stadium, in 10 minutes—a feat never replicated. He climbed brick buildings crimping mortar, led us bouldering in the Santa Cruz hills, did one-armed handstands atop moving cars. Tough on the mat and No. 3 on the sport's Olympic ladder, Surmon, '95, took nothing else seriously.
Stanford, with its formal Quad and casual intellectualism, was not an accommodating place for wrestlers. Wrestlers are rowdy and like a brawl. One year we lost our All-American 177-pounder after he fought nine Sigma Chis over a pick-up basketball game. Surmon, then 26, kept the team in line in unusual ways: We roasted steaks on sticks in the volleyball courts, climbed the construction crane at midnight, crashed a cocktail party in our BVDs. (As we left, a grad student slipped her number into Tod's boxer-briefs.)
I wasn't a typical jock, but Tod didn't judge me, didn't give me grief about my good GPA. I remember a close match, wrestling so tight and careful that I couldn't score. The head coach was pissed, threw up his hands in frustration. Tod draped his arm about my shoulders. "Copperman, let it go a little. You're better than this guy."
With Tod's mentoring, I kept it together. I was close to beating the senior in my weight. I started making the big moves, the ones that require you commit all the way and forget the fear of making a mistake. After practice, I'd drive with Tod in his fresh-waxed, cherry-red 3000 GT out those back roads in Los Altos doing 80, 90, 100, windows down, stereo bumping. I'd yell over the wind, glad to be alive.
New Year's, the first day of the new century, we got a call. On Fox Sports, they were showing Tod's recent championship at the Midlands tournament: his winning duck to body lock with five seconds on the clock. "But in a tragic turn," the newscaster was saying, and then there was grainy footage of the Y2K countdown at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas. I knew Tod had hopped a plane directly from the tournament to meet a buddy. Casinos glittered neon, and distant fireworks flared pink and blue. A man was shimmying up a 30-foot pole—Surmon, seeking the top of everything.
The newscaster spoke of high voltage, how the young man couldn't have known he was completing a circuit. The figure on the pole stiffened, and then there was a slow, toppling fall, people screaming and screaming until the video cut. Too early, was what I thought. If the video hadn't stopped, wouldn't Tod have popped to his feet, grinning?
It was never the same without Tod. Different before, I was ruined after, because for me wrestling was religion. Surmon—the perfect wrestler, the one whose technique was flawless and will unbreakable—had made believing seem possible. To sustain devotion to sport requires its altar.
For years, I pretended that if Surmon had lived, I might have been a better athlete and a better man. But then I found a news photo of Tod, moments before he fell, grinning like an arrogant, arrogant fool, showboating for the cheering crowd below. Suddenly I wasn't angry at the unjust world anymore, or at Tod, who always would have sought some higher pole and found that bad fall. I was angry at myself. I was never like Surmon, could never have learned to be careless.
Sometimes I get on a winding mountain road, crank the stereo, open the windows and let the air rush in. Though it feels fast, though I can barely hear my voice when I yell, it is not the same. I am alone at the wheel of my aging Subaru doing 60, always 60, and Tod—Tod is still gone.
MICHAEL COPPERMAN, '02, teaches at the University of Oregon.
