Oswego State senior Christian Gramuglia is in the same boat as a lot of other college athletes who had their 2020-2021 seasons taken from them due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately for Gramuglia, this was supposed to be his last year with Oswego State.
The Schenectady native chose to attend Oswego State for two different reasons: they had golf team and a decent wrestling program, both of which he could see himself being on. Gramuglia played golf his freshman and sophomore year of college while simultaneously being on the wrestling team. Although he never started on either, he intended on stepping away from the wrestling team to pursue golf. Luckily, Mike Howard, the head coach of both teams, pushed Gramuglia back to the mat.
“It doesn’t matter if he’s on a golf course or on the wrestling mat, if there’s something on the line, he’s trying to win,” Howard said. “I really respect Christian and his growth since arriving here as a freshman.”
Gramuglia has been wrestling for 17 years. His brother came home from kindergarten one day with a flyer, showed it to his dad, and the three of them ended up going to the tournament.
“My dad just kind of threw me on the mat … and that’s how it all started,” Gramuglia said.
He then went on to join the MiniMen Wrestling Club, worked his way up to the Journeymen Wrestling Club and was on his high school’s varsity wrestling team as a seventh grader. Gramuglia thought he was done with wrestling after placing third at states his senior year of high school, but after coming to Oswego State, that soon changed.
Typical training for Gramuglia included 6 a.m. lifts twice a week, two-hour training sessions Monday through Friday and even more training if he had to cut weight. All of this training has paid off as Gramuglia has placed in the top three in many different tournaments, including the Ithaca College Invitational and the McGinley Invitational at King’s College. But he said his biggest accomplishment was making it to the national tournament.
“My biggest success was definitely making it to the national tournament with Charlie [Grygas] last year,” Gramuglia said. “It was the best one too.”
Unfortunately, the NCAA Div. III Wrestling Championships in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, were canceled before Gramuglia and Grygas got to compete due to COVID-19.
Grygas is only a sophomore and still has a few years left on the collegiate mats.
As for Gramuglia, he is upset that he will not have one more year to prove his talent on the mat but is looking forward to a lot more things for his future.
“It sucks because it was my last year. It would have been nice to have one more season,” Gramuglia said. “But I’ve been home, doing all my classes remotely, and I’ve been searching for jobs to take the next step in life. We’ll see where it goes from here.”
Photo provided by Oswego State Athletics
