Determination trumps injury and pain

MEDICAL LAKE — The spotlight shining down on the mat reflects upward on the young man’s face that is nearly emotionless, yet somehow predatory.

“That’s what you have to do,” 16-year-old Cardinal wrestler Ethan Davis said. “That puts a fire under your butt. It sets you off.”

Today, the 170-pound champion wrestler doesn’t study his competition, but feels it better to simply “impose my will on my opponents,” whom he sees, at least while he’s on the mat, not so much as someone to beat — but something to destroy.

Being a predator is “something you want to project,” he said.

Davis began wrestling at five years old when he started his tutelage at the Mat Maulers Wrestling Club and wrestling was “all fun and games.”

By the sixth grade he was wrestling every weekend and the fun and games had become dedicated work involving wrestling camps and immersion in the sport 12 months a year as a club wrestler where he got beat “hundreds of times.”

It became what dedicated wrestlers call “the grind.”

“You get run into the ground and then built back up, over and over and over,” he said. “It’s what I’ve been doing for the last 10 years of my life.”

His efforts have shown dividends. Davis won multiple state championships before entering high school, has wrestled three times with the Washington National Team, took the state title in his weight class as a Medical Lake High School freshman, was named All American by the National High School Coaches Association and took fourth at the U.S. Open Wrestling Championships the same year.

It seemed that for Davis, at the top of his game after years of practice and training, the wrestling sky was the limit.

But life has a way of testing the strong, and in the fall of 2018 he was injured during practice.

“I knew I was hurt, but didn’t really narrow it down,” Davis said.

Two days later he was wrestling at the Las Vegas Freak Show wrestling tournament, playing through the pain enough to finish 10-2. But his injuries were troublesome, and the pain overwhelming enough that he only made it through the second day of high school practice.

An MRI finally showed the extent of his injuries: a fractured pelvis and torn labrum in his shoulder.

Davis was forced to initially quit wrestling for two weeks to undergo physical therapy. But he eventually ended up in a wheel chair, then crutches through mid-January and deep into the wrestling season.

And his injuries refused to heal.

“I couldn’t jog or roll or take the impact,” he recalled. “My entire season was gone.”

Although he did go to state, it was as a spectator.

“Watching state was super-emotional,” Davis, a highly goal-oriented person for someone his age, said as he saw his would-be competitors that he had beaten his freshman year move up in the weight brackets. “My whole goal coming into high school was four-time state champion.”

Davis was finally cleared to wrestle in April, but the pain returned after only two weeks. A re-evaluation by a second doctor eventually led to surgery, followed by more rehab and sports performance training through late July of 2019.

“I missed all of the high school season and all of the club season,” Davis lamented.

He was finally cleared — again — to fully participate in wrestling in mid-August, so he hooked up with a wrestling coach at Spokane’s Inland Northwest Training Center to began re-training until the 2019 high school wrestling season started up.

“It was super-discouraging because I was just getting stomped-on by everybody,” he said, noting that by that time he hadn’t stepped on a wrestling mat in 10 months. “I wasn’t used to getting beat that much.”

But he has been pain free since.

Now a junior, the first match he wrestled as a Cardinal was a double dual against West Valley and Lake City. He won both his matches by a pin and a decision.

“I put on the best performance I’ve ever had as far as high-level wrestling,” Davis said. “It was super-motivating to put on the performance that I did.”

And he has been winning ever since.

But all obstacles teach lessons, and for Davis, a straight “A” student who has “a panic attack” with anything less, being unable to wrestle or work out left him bored and with an even stronger desire to be out on the mat.

“It motivated me a ton in the off-season to work and come out of it the best athlete, the best wrestler I possibly can be,” he said, adding that after years of training and practice, not being able to participate crystallized his life direction and goals.

Davis, see’s wrestling as a metaphor.

“It’s the only sport that truly can be compared to the struggles and successes of life,” Davis said when asked what he likes about wrestling. “You have to push yourself past limits you don’t even know about.”

Although he has every intention of earning two more state wrestling titles, and to be named to the top five by the NHSCA and place at the Fargo Nationals — the apex of U.S. amateur wresting — his longer-term goal is to wrestle in college while he studies, of all things, business.

Lee Hughes can be reached at [email protected].