Death Clutch - Brock Lesnar [7]
I finally got to Lasson Community College at 5:30 A.M. on Monday—the day classes started. I immediately tried to call the wrestling coach. Of course, no one answered—only farm boys would be up at five-thirty in the morning. So I left a message and sat by a pay phone just waiting for it to ring.
I don’t know if I was sleeping, or half sleeping, but at around 7 A.M. the phone rings and it’s the coach. He says he’ll meet me up at the school in a half hour. I was completely exhausted after the cross-country drive, but those damn credits were calling me.
When I met with the coach, he asked if I had any relatives at all in the state of California. If I did, I could register as a resident. It just so happened I had two aunts in California. So I used one of their addresses, and sixteen credits were only going to cost me $160. This was still a lot of money to me, because when I got to California I had exactly $480 in my pocket, and nothing in the bank.
I spent $160 on tuition, which left me with $320. I knew I was going to have to eat, so I put a $200 deposit down on the school food program. That got me breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the dining hall every day, and left me with $120 to spare. But that California school wasn’t a great fit for me. I stood out in that place like a big infected sore thumb.
I had my tuition and meals taken care of, but the whole adventure would be pretty pointless if I didn’t pass my classes, and that is hard to do without any books. But if I would have paid for all the books I needed, I wouldn’t have had any money left over for anything else. So I shared books with the other wrestlers. Sounds easy enough, but I really hated having to bum books off the guys all the time.
Still, Susanville, California, will always be a special place to me. I almost started my fighting career there.
I found a little gym that had some weight-lifting equipment and a mixed-martial-arts dojo. This was my first MMA training. One night, the guys at the gym were all going to Reno, Nevada, for a fight. I called up J Robinson and let him know I was planning to fight in Reno to pick up a few bucks. He told me flat out that I would be jeopardizing my chances at becoming a D-I athlete if I did. That was all I needed to hear, and I didn’t go. Had I gotten a taste of MMA fighting back then, who knows? Maybe I would never have gone back to school.
Someday, I’d like to take my wife and kids to Susanville, just for the hell of it. Maybe even make the drive. Show my kids where I had to go, what I had to do, to just make it to the University of Minnesota.
I’m not complaining. I’m glad I paid my dues and earned my own way.
After my California summer, I just needed another eight credits to get enrolled at the U of M. I called my U of M advisor and asked if she would help me make sure all my credits from California got transferred back to Bismarck State College. Then I drove from Lasson to Bismarck and started the fall semester at my old school. But BSC didn’t have a wrestling program anymore, and I knew I had to do something to keep up my conditioning and skill level.
Because I had no one to wrestle with at BSC, I drove out to the University of Mary, an NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics) school just outside Bismarck, and practiced with their team every day.
Being an overachiever, I took twelve credits that fall, even though I only needed eight. I wasn’t taking any chances this time around.
At BSC, I was living with my old friend Mike Eckert, who was my dorm neighbor the year before. Mike was really cool. Same old story: I didn’t have any money at all, so Mike shared his room with me. It was just a pad we could crash in, but that was important to me because I had nowhere else to go. I’m just glad that I get this chance to tell everyone what Mike did for me that fall.
I quickly fell into a routine at BSC. Weights in the morning. Back-to-back classes. Wrestling practice with the University of Mary team. Homework. But, every day, all I could think of is that I was one day closer to