‘Our own Olympic team in Ann Arbor’: Five Michigan wrestlers bound for Paris

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (WOOD) — Walk into the Michigan wrestling room these days and there’s a good chance you’ll see an Olympian at work.

“I think just having this culture here at Cliff Keen Wrestling Club just been amazing,” one of those Olympians, Mason Parris, said. “We can all build off each other’s energy. We can all encourage each other. When we’re having hard days, we can lift each other up.”

“We have four other Olympians,” said Myles Amine, who became the first Michigan wrestler to medal in the Olympics when he took bronze in Tokyo. “It just feels like it feels like we have our own Olympic team here in Ann Arbor.”

Parris and Adam Coon will wrestle for Team USA, Amine will compete for San Marino, Stevan Micic for Serbia and Austin Gomez — the most recent Michigan standout — for Mexico.

“You want to surround yourself with people who have the same goals as you and the same lifestyle as you just to give you that extra motivation,” Gomez said.

One of the reasons Gomez transferred to Michigan for his fifth year was the presence of former Olympic champion and Michigan assistant coach Kevin Jackson and head coach Sergei Beloglazov, who won two gold medals for Russia in 1980 and 1988.

“They really emphasize (that) loving the process is a lot more important than loving the results, and I really kind of try to embody that and bring that philosophy into my life as much as possible,” Amine said.

All five are in different weight classes, so none will compete directly against one another in Paris. That means they can all root for each other.

“We were all going to the Olympics. But … it’s cool because I get to call them my teammates, my brothers, fellow Olympians,” Amine said.

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