Harvard-bound wrestler has father as his inspiration

L.J. Barlow walked onto the mat pretty confident for the last match of the meet. He hadn't heard of the younger Penn Charter wrestler he was facing. As a senior at the Haverford School, wrestling at 195 pounds, Barlow knows enough to take every opponent at face value, that there are no givens.

"He was stronger than I expected," Barlow said later.

So the match wasn't going to be over immediately. Barlow's style isn't to dazzle anyway. His matches tend to be low-scoring affairs. His coach, Bruce Kennett, will tell you that Barlow himself is "very, very hard to score on," that his head and hands stay in good position, that he's both strong and adept at maintaining his level, which is a very good thing in wrestling. It's not a defensive position, Kennett added. Barlow is just not going to take a chance and leave himself vulnerable.

Barlow learned at an early age that the fundamentals are really all you need to win. His father, Larry, had wrestled at Drexel and coached the sport. He taught his son that the basics would serve him better than all sorts of fancy moves.

That doesn't mean Barlow wanted to be predictable in this match. Even as Barlow sprawled out on his toes, pressing his opponent's back, grinding down - the guy couldn't know exactly what was coming next.

"Twenty . . . twenty," a Penn Charter coach yelled out, indicating the number of seconds the opposing wrestler had to hold out until the end of the first period.

Barlow was in the moment with his arm in the guy's back. He was not thinking about how he would go home and talk about this match with his dad.

Larry Barlow used to help out with Haverford School's team. He was driving to a practice last winter when he got in a car accident and bumped his head. He was woozy enough that he asked his son to drive him home to Wallingford. As he got checked out, he got an MRI exam. In some ways, that was lucky, his son said. They wouldn't have known what was going on in Larry Barlow's head without the car accident.

Brain cancer.

"He's always been my coach, my whole life," L.J. said.

Larry Barlow knew enough as a coach how not to be as a parent.

"I've seen a lot of crazy, psychotic parents, and Larry is not the guy who is going to fall in that category," Kennett said. "He was supportive of his kid."

L.J. is the oldest of six. His dad can't work anymore and the chemotherapy and other treatments usually have him too wiped out to come to matches. "A lot of times he types up workout plans and things I need to work on," L.J. said.

In third grade, they asked students about life goals and L.J. wrote down: "Go to Harvard." He didn't know much other than he had heard it was the best college. They hung those goals up in the hallway so parents and everyone else saw them. Everyone remembered that L.J. wanted to go to Harvard.

He's going to Harvard.

"My mom always taught me: Be the best that you can be," Barlow said. "I kind of only liked it for its name, and its reputation. But when I actually visited, it kind of stood out for me."

His goal is simple: to win a national championship. Harvard's coach told him the school has the resources to help make that happen; the rest would be up to Barlow. He was accepted in the fall.

His immediate goal is this year's prep nationals. That's why he has been sneaking in some lifts during free periods. After a two-hour practice, he'll get home, grab a quick bite around 6:30, and before 7 be up in his room stretching again before an Insanity workout, which he added to the routine about four days a week.

He admits there are pressures. He wants to do well now so his younger brothers and sisters can see him succeed. He thinks about that more lately, trying to instill a strong work ethic in them. "I think - I hope - I'm on the right track," L.J. said.

Barlow won the Beast of the East tournament in Delaware as a junior. He was second at the prep nationals, losing a close overtime match. Lately, that's been on his mind a lot more, the meet at the end of this month that finishes his high school career.

"I'm feeling strong, I'm feeling fast, I'm feeling in shape," Barlow said. "I think I'm ready."

That day, the Penn Charter wrestler didn't make it through the 20 seconds. The match went maybe four more. Barlow knew the clock, too. He went for an arm bar and half-nelson combination, each a simple move but one his father had taught him years ago to do in combination.

"He gave it a little flavor by putting them together," L.J. Barlow said. "He said he saw it in college. It's a very, very tight move."

The ref leaned in, closely watching the result of it, and slapped the mat. A hand was raised, the wrestlers shook hands, and L.J. - short for Larry Jr. - had something to talk about back at home with his dad.

@jensenoffcampus