'They were all there for me': Sycamore's Adam Gelman wrestles with and against autism

Before stepping onto the mat for another match, Sycamore wrestler Adam Gelman needs a bit more time than his opponents or teammates to get ready.

“I need to find a quiet spot,” Gelman said of his pre-match routine. “I need to have my headphones on, my music going. And I need to pace back and forth, stretch out and just make sure that I know that there’s nothing here that can stop me.”

It is a routine that is successful for Gelman, who became Sycamore’s all-time pin leader on Feb. 17, and one necessary for the wrestler who was diagnosed with autism as a 2-year-old.

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Adam’s parents, Effie and Oren, were told early that Adam was born with blindness and would never walk or talk. After a pair of doctors delivered that news, the Gelmans went to a third who offered a different outlook. With vigorous therapies and family support, Adam could do those things he wasn’t supposed to be able to do. It worked.

“I wouldn’t change anything about his journey in life,” Adam’s mother, Effie, said. “I wouldn’t change his diagnosis. Nothing. Nothing he’s gone through. Not the good, not the bad, because it’s all helped to make him who he is and it’s helped him to continue to be a fighter.”

Along with the growth Adam has had medically, it was wrestling that tied everything up and made him the young man he is today.

'If you’re taking one, you’re taking them all'

Adam’s wrestling career began as the result of a bet between his older brother, David, and David’s best friend back in New Jersey where the Gelmans are from. If David’s friend attended a baseball practice, then David would need to attend a wrestling practice. It was a bet, and both parties had to pay out.

“The boys made a deal and I said to my husband, ‘If you’re taking one, you’re taking them all,’ ” Effie said.

Adam had just stopped playing soccer and was looking for a new activity, but the family was unsure how Adam would take the frequent contact necessary to wrestle. It turned into a trial-and-error effort to get comfortable, something that Adam has to face to this day.

“I was probably the pessimist of the group,” Oren said. “With all of his challenges, if you think about the one sport you should probably avoid with everything he had going on, it was wrestling.

“He took to it. He showed his grit and determination and it was all him at the end of the day. All of the challenges he turned into opportunities and he capitalized on.”

He went from 'never wrestling again' to state alternate

As a sophomore at the district tournament in 2022, Adam had his sights set on becoming a state qualifier for the first time in his career. It turned instead into one of the most challenging yet crucial days in Adam’s life and wrestling career.

While warming up for a match, Adam felt like everyone’s eyes shifted onto him, which didn’t allow him to focus like he had grown accustomed to. The pressure mounted and mounted. He was poked in the eye during the match and his sensitivities continued to grow. Every move and grab started to feel like a punch to the body and Adam shut himself down.

“That day was a day we all learned a lot from each other,” Sycamore assistant coach Tim Arnold said. Arnold is a boys assistant under head coach Jeremy Pletz and the girls wrestling head coach at Sycamore who works closely with Adam and often is in his corner for matches.

Arnold continued: “The pressure got too much for him. He looked like he was okay. He was a little nervous before we stepped out onto the mat and things started to spiral. We could see that he was going south pretty quickly. He wasn’t responding with our coaching and was out there with a glazed-over look in his face.”

In the third period of the consolation semifinals, Adam couldn’t continue and defaulted out of the match. It became a community effort to get Adam back into a state where he could wrestle again.

Arnold and Moeller assistant Mike Kimmerly took him outside and away from the usual commotion of a wrestling meet. After several hours, Adam was calmed and went from thinking he’d never wrestle again to getting back on the mat for a fifth-place match. He secured a pin in the match and earned a state alternate berth.

“He was able to rebound in that match and I feel like that’s where he figured out that if he could listen to us and trust us that we can help him get through any situation that he needed to get through,” Arnold said.

From state alternate to state qualifier

Despite the traumatic episode that nearly derailed his wrestling career, Adam looks upon the incident as something that has aided him in his last two seasons. He said the shutdown helped create the pre-match routine that prevents another episode.

“I look back on it and I just think, ‘If I’d just found this out sooner it could have all been stopped. If I had just done this instead of this, it would have never happened, but in reality it was probably the best thing that could have happened that day,’” Adam said.

Effie and Oren point to the wrestling community in Cincinnati as being vital in keeping Adam in the sport. Each school understands what Adam needs to do during matches and provides areas for him to do his routine pre- and post-match.

With his new routine locked in, Adam returned to the district meet last season having already clinched his sectional championship. In the district bracket, Gelman nailed down three pins and a 12-11 decision in the finals to take the district crown and qualify for the state tournament, where he won one match.

Now a senior, Adam has taken that school pin record along with a conference title and has more postseason accolades to achieve. He began his quest for a state placement at the sectional tournament on Feb. 24, scoring a pair of pins and a major decision in the finals. From there, he advances to the district tournament at Kettering Fairmont on March 2 and 3 with the state tournament the following weekend at the Schottenstein Center.

Tournaments and trophies are a small part of wrestling success

“The support structure that he has gotten from wrestling is part of the reason why he’s been so successful,” Oren Gelman said. “When I say successful, I think wrestling is a small part of it.”

Adam had previously been taking his classes at Skyward Academy, but during his sophomore year, he felt comfortable enough to move into classes at Sycamore High School. Again, it was wrestling that led Adam on his way back.

“If I hadn’t known anyone, I wouldn’t have gone mainstream,” Adam said about moving into Sycamore. “Because of wrestling, I knew people. I had people I could rely on. I had my coaches. I had my friends. I had my teammates. When I got there, they were all there for me.”

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Wrestling with autism is a life-changer for Sycamore's Adam Gelman