Holly’s Jerry Holdren, set to graduate two years early, brings brains and brawn to CHSAA state wrestling tournament

When everything else came so easy, Jerry Holdren was determined to do something hard.

That’s why the Holly sophomore, an academic whiz who will graduate from high school two years early this spring, decided to start wrestling in seventh grade. He got crushed that first season, but by his second, he took runner-up at the middle school state tournament and signed up to be the team manager for the Holly varsity.

Naturally, the quick-learning Holdren studied Holly practices as an eighth grader, notebook in hand. That laid the base for consecutive CHSAA state tournament appearances last year and this one inside Ball Arena.

“I’m always paying attention to the details of the sport, and I’ve always been able to pick up on them pretty well,” Holdren said. “In that manager role, I was able to take what I learned from observing and then go home and I’d wrestle on the mat in my garage with my friends, and other people I recruited from around town, like former Holly wrestlers. I would put what I saw into practice on my own time.”

For Holdren, wrestling has done what few things often could.

It pushed him beyond what he thought he was capable of. It knocked him down a few pegs.

Away from the mat, the 16-year-old carries a 4.31 GPA while primarily taking college courses for the past two years. He’s helped his father renovate houses. He’s restored a classic car, rebuilding the engine on his 1966 Chevrolet Impala.

But finding his way to become a competitive wrestler was a much taller task.

And all that was just fine with Holdren.

“Instead of getting discouraged after getting mostly dominated as a seventh grader, he ate it up and he loved the challenge,” explained his dad, Jacob Holdren. “And instead of folding, he just buckled down and worked at it. He went to the gym, put on a bunch of mass, got really strong.”

Holdren lost his opening match on Thursday at Ball Arena, getting pinned by Sedgwick County/Fleming’s Owen Harris in the second period. But Holdren (24-13) is confident he can make some noise on the consolation side of the bracket on Friday, and his goal remains to place in what will be his final state tournament.

No matter what happens over the next couple of days, Holdren is intent on soaking in the final moments of his shortened prep wrestling career and show that school-sport balance can be obtained, no matter how dedicated one is to the books.

As an eighth grader, Holdren started taking classes at the high school. By his freshman year, he was taking mostly community college courses. This year, he elevated to taking online courses through CSU. Running out of academic challenges, in December, he was finally cleared by Holly School District RE-3 to graduate two years early.

That left him scrambling to apply to colleges — his list is MIT, Stanford, Colorado School of Mines and CSU, though he hasn’t officially gotten into any of them yet — and to take the SAT for those applications. With a week of prep time, Holdren scored a 1340 on the exam.

Sarah Thompson, a Holly science teacher who taught Holdren as an eighth grader in her junior-level chemistry class and also had him in biology the next year, called him a “one-in-a-million student.”

“His way of learning, it comes so naturally to him, and I would really like to know how his brain works,” Thompson said. “He’s a very hands-on learner, but he can also just read material and understand it. … The juniors in that chemistry class, if they were struggling with something, he would jump in to assist them. Kids were definitely like, ‘OK, we’ve got Jerry in here, he can help us.'”

Holly wrestling head coach Mike Lozano says Holdren’s intellect translated to wrestling, where the sophomore “has made some significant jumps pretty quickly over the past couple years.”

“His ability in the classroom makes him learn so much quicker in the wrestling room because he wants to know how everything is run and how each move is broken down before he goes out there,” Lozano said. “He wants to know why a move is used, how it’s used, how to beat it. That (intensive learning style) translates to this sport.”

Holdren is one of six wrestlers for Holly at Ball Arena this week, the most state qualifiers for the program in nearly 20 years. With his teammates along for the ride, Holdren isn’t dwelling on the fact that if he had a normal high school experience, he might be setting himself up for a deep run in the tournament as a junior and senior. Not to mention a possible shot at a championship.

Instead, the wrestling genius is just focused on enjoying the ride. And he vows that after this weekend, he won’t be done donning a singlet quite yet, even as he’s off to pursue his goal of becoming a mechanical engineer.

“My eyes have been opened wide this week, just soaking everything in,” Holdren said. “I’m just appreciating every opportunity I’ve been given, and I’m relishing my final moments competing for my school. … I’ll find a way to keep going in this sport, even if it’s an independent gym or a club. This weekend won’t be the end of me in this sport.”

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