Wounded warrior back in the fold for the Hurons

Knee injuries are as much a part of high school sports as sitting in the stands and munching on a bag of popcorn. Every season there seems to be an athlete going down with torn tendons or ligaments in their knees. That doesn?t mean they are getting any easy to recover from. Not only are there many hours of rehabilitation, but there?s also the mental hurdles of reinjury. There?s enough to think about on the gridiron, courts and mats. Junior wrestler Greg Tulgestke is another wounded warrior from Rogers City High School (RCHS) who?s finally made it back from the long recovery of an anterior cruciate ligament tear (ACL).

The initial injury occurred about a year ago when Greg was wrestling his older brother, senior captain Ben Tulgestke, in the living room of their home. ?Wrestling was a sport I was looking at all year,? said Tulgestke, following a tough practice the day before the Hurons? matchup Wednesday (past press time) with Iron Mountain in team regionals. ?It?s what I wanted to do. I feel it?s the sport I excel the most at. It?s awesome to be back.? Winning and helping his team get by the Mountaineers was the first and foremost priority on his mind, though.

TULGESTKE HAD been working out with the team before getting clearance by his doctor. As soon as he got the ok, Greg was excited and called head coach Pat Lamb from Ann Arbor to give him the good news. ?I said, ?oh, ok. If that?s really what you want to do,? ? Lamb remembers telling him in a teasing manner. Inside, Lamb felt just as elated to have the tough-as-nails kid back, because he knew how much it meant to the young man. ?The first meet we went to was Alpena,? said Tulgestke of the first scheduled date in December. ?I hated watching my weight class come and go by. It was tough, I didn?t enjoy it that much.? Even though he couldn?t compete, he went to the practices and meets and continued to support his fellow teammates.

?Greg is the type of athlete that always wants to be out there, no matter what,? said mom Heidi (Brege) Tulgestke, an all-state volleyball player from RCHS?s 1988 state champion volleyball team. ?He had an injury in the seventh grade in football before the season even started, and knew he wouldn’t be able to play, but never missed a practice or a game. ?It was the same this year for football, he knew he wouldn’t be able to play, but went to all the games and stood on the sidelines, even in the wind and pouring rain.? Lamb said not only is Greg an integral part of the glue that helps hold the Hurons together, but has been a terrific example as well.

?SINCE HE?S been back, our team has really picked it up a notch a

nd have wrestled above our heads,? said Lamb. ?That?s because of kids like Greg. The other kids know what he has gone through to get back on the mat. They are not going to go out there and give up knowing that Greg is not going to do that either.? Other than the bulky brace he wears, Lamb said you wouldn?t know he?s recovering from a major knee injury. Tulgestke?s focus this Saturday, when the Hurons host individual regionals, will be to get his ticket stamped to The Palace and join a slew of his teammates on one of the biggest wrestling stages: individual state finals. Greg missed state last year by one match.

In less than a month of wrestling, Greg placed third in the conference and second at districts. ?His dad and I are happy for him that he’s been able to get back out there and wrestle, and are obviously very proud of him for all the hard work that he’s done to do it,? said Heidi. ?Anything else he can accomplish would be icing on the cake.?