Resilient Brosamer stacking mat wins

DUNLAP — Twelve months ago Concord senior Brycen Brosamer could barely walk. On Saturday he will stride into Fort Wayne’s Allen County War Memorial Coliseum as one of the most dangerous wrestlers in the 144-pound semistate bracket, carrying a 31-4 record and a season’s worth of momentum that few saw coming.

The turnaround began with a decision last summer: football was finished. After breaking his fibula and ankle during his junior gridiron campaign, Brosamer limped through only nine wrestling matches, finishing 5-4 and hobbling to sixth at sectional. The injuries cost him preseason training, then re-appeared the moment he re-took the mat.

“I came back for one practice, landed wrong and it felt like I had a broken leg again,” Brosamer recalled. Doctors confirmed a second fracture—this time in the ankle—and his season never restarted in earnest.

Rather than risk a repeat, Brosamer gave up the shoulder pads, devoted himself to rehabilitation and attacked wrestling with single-sport focus. The payoff has been swift and decisive: sectional champion, regional champion, Northern Lakes Conference champion and, now, a legitimate threat to punch his first ticket to the state finals.

“I feel I can compete with anybody at the semistate and win the whole thing,” said Brosamer, who opens against Wabash’s Corbin Goshert, a 7-1 victim earlier this year. “I just have to finish out matches and wrestle all six minutes.”

Concord co-head coach Brian Pfeil believes the senior’s confidence is justified.

“I believe he’s a top-four wrestler at 144 at the semistate and a state qualifier, as long as he goes out and wrestles like he has all season,” Pfeil said. “Bryce put in a lot of offseason work. Mentally, he’s in a much better spot.”

That mental edge was hard-earned. Brosamer began wrestling in sixth grade as a 90-pounder who, by his own admission, “was terrible.” The progression from curiosity to contender has surprised even those who coached him in junior high.

“My junior high coach said I’ve shocked everyone,” Brosamer noted. “I’ve become something nobody thought I would become.”

The semistate stage is not unfamiliar territory; as a freshman alternate he lost his opening match at 138 pounds. He expects the experience to steady his nerves this weekend while he chases the biggest prize of his career.

Away from the mat Brosamer maintains a 4.015 GPA and has already fielded outreach from college programs—conversations he has tabled until the final whistle of his senior season.

“I want to live in the present and work my hardest now,” he said.

For a wrestler who once wondered if he would walk normally again, the present moment looks remarkably like a championship opportunity.

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