Arguably the greatest athlete in Wabash history Riley Lefever ’17 approaches life, learning, and even writing poetry much the way he wrestles on the mat.
Roughly 30 minutes before the 197-pound championship bout and his final match for Wabash, Riley Lefever is sparring with his older brother Reece, now a Wabash assistant coach. They’re hand fighting, taking shots, getting takedowns, finding ways to escape the bottom position.
Riley is in a lather, throwing his brother around the mat like a ragdoll. No one has worked harder than Reece to get Riley to this moment. For 18 years and every phase of his career, Reece has been in his corner—from the fat little kid in middle school to the high-schooler who wasn’t very good to the Wabash senior Academic All-American and most dominant wrestler in DIII history.
It’s fitting that one of his brothers is the last true test standing between Riley and his fourth national title.
Riley pats Reece on the chest and the warmup ends. No words needed.
The Wabash crowd at the LaCrosse Center in Wisconsin quiets, a hint of nerves from the 20-plus Lefever family members, including Riley’s fiancée, Maddie, and his other brother, Conner, who have anticipated this match all year.
Riley is in a lather, throwing his brother around the mat like a ragdoll. No one has worked harder than Reece to get Riley to this moment. For 18 years and every phase of his career, Reece has been in his corner—from the fat little kid in middle school to the high-schooler who wasn’t very good to the Wabash senior Academic All-American and most dominant wrestler in DIII history.
It’s fitting that one of his brothers is the last true test standing between Riley and his fourth national title.
Riley pats Reece on the chest and the warmup ends. No words needed.
The Wabash crowd at the LaCrosse Center in Wisconsin quiets, a hint of nerves from the 20-plus Lefever family members, including Riley’s fiancée, Maddie, and his other brother, Conner, who have anticipated this match all year.
Riley’s father, Kent, a former wrestler, seems relaxed but intent.
Riley’s mother, Nancy, stands next to the elevated mat, ready to photograph, as she has every one of her sons’ matches since high school. She is visibly shaking.
Riley walks to a folding chair and splays out next to Wabash Head Coach Brian Anderson while the other championship finalists warm up. His work is done—now it’s all about the performance.
“I used to feel a lot of pressure not just to win, but to not be the guy who lost, who let the team down,” he says. “That took a big emotional toll on me—between each match I’d be shaking.
“But I changed my outlook. Now I know our coaches put us through tough practices, that I have prepared physically and mentally. I focus on competing, giving my best effort right now. If I do that, I don’t care about the outcome. Once I shake hands and wrestle, I’m focused.”
There is no place to hide on the wrestling mat. No teammates to shoulder the burden, no scheme on offense or defense. Wrestling is competition distilled to its essence; wrestlers are the closest thing to gladiators that modern sport can produce.
Kent Lefever says his son loves it.
“He’s a student—he watches, he observes, and he does it.”
That wasn’t always the case.
“Riley really wasn’t into wrestling,” Nancy says, recalling the four-year-old who accompanied his older brothers to practices. “He just went for all of the fun times together and the snacks we took.”
The Lefever brothers’ version of fun at home included jumping onto couches from the second-floor landing, leaping into the pool from a second-floor balcony, and wrestling with such vigor they wrecked the house.
“I was constantly repairing holes in the walls,” Nancy told National Public Radio’s Only A Game. “I finally said,
‘Okay, I’m done. I’m not fixing any more. People can come and see how destructive you guys are.’”
When Conner and Reece began playing sports, Riley tagged along, too, often joining his older brothers’ teams as well as his own.
“Conner and I, we tore him up,” Reece says. “We beat him up pretty bad.”
Nancy says the physical tests never seemed to bother Riley.
“He played with all of these older kids for years. He didn’t care that they were bigger or stronger. He loved the physical aspect. He wasn’t afraid.”
During middle school and into high school, Riley had his ups and downs—he went
“something like 5-20 as a sophomore,” Nancy remembers—and was pinned at sectionals by a wrestler he had defeated earlier in the year.
“I don’t know how seriously he was taking it,” says Reece.
Throughout the uphill battles, Riley’s potential shone through. His middle school coach, Bobby Ables, often said he had more potential than either of his brothers.
“I remember thinking, He’s just saying that to make Riley feel better,” Nancy says. “But he kept saying it. We thought he was being nice, trying to build Riley’s morale.”
As Reece and Conner developed into top-notch high school wrestlers, Riley was still on the fence. At one point, even his mother thought it was going to be tough for Riley to follow in his brothers’ footsteps.
“We were feeling sorry for him.” Nancy laughs. “As I look back now, I think we shouldn’t have felt sorry for Riley.”
The days of doubt are long gone. He went 44-1 as a senior at Carroll High School in Fort Wayne, IN, losing the state title match. Then he headed to Wabash and methodically etched his name among the elites of the sport on any level.
“Losing that state title match made me feel like I never wanted to feel like that again,” Riley recalls. “But I’m thankful that happened because without that, I probably wouldn’t have had the success I’ve had today.”
“When he decided to love wrestling, he loved it completely,” says his father.
It was a different love that brought Riley to Wabash. The best recruiters the College could have had were rising juniors Conner and Reece.
“I’ve been wrestling with my brothers my whole life, and the last two years in high school were without them,” Riley says. “I missed them; I missed wrestling with them.”
Just how dominant has Riley Lefever been during his four years at Wabash? He finished with a career record of 158-6, including a spotless 129-0 mark against DIII opponents. Eighty-four of his 164 career matches ended in a pin. Another 25 matches ended in technical fall (winning by more than 15 points).
He earned Most Outstanding Wrestler honors at the NCAA Championships in each of the past two seasons, and was named the Most Dominant Wrestler by the National Wrestling Coaches Association both years as well. He is the only DIII wrestler in the past two seasons to win each of his matches at the NCAA Championships by pin or technical fall.
As teammate Owen Doster ’20, himself an All-American, says, “When you go against Riley, most of the time, it’s simply about survival.”
Is Lefever the greatest athlete in Wabash history?
“I won’t get in trouble if I say yes.” Coach Anderson laughs. “I don’t know how you can compare it to anything else. Wabash is a great athletic institution. We’ve done a lot of great things in a lot of different sports, but this one is on another level. It’s almost artwork.”
Aside from his speed, strength, and work ethic, Riley has something else working for him: his smile. In the two days leading up to the national championships, that smile was constant.
It showed up in those workouts as he led his teammates through nearly endless games of catch.
You saw it on the mat in competition as well. Just prior to his opening match, teammate Darden Schurg ’19 was finishing off a win in overtime on an adjacent mat. As those final seconds ticked away, Riley slyly slow-walked his way to the circle, obviously preoccupied with the action to his left.
When Schurg’s victory was secured, Riley flashed a big grin, yelled a few words of encouragement to his teammate, turned, shook hands with his opponent…
And pinned him in 36 seconds.
“I like to lighten the mood of a room, relax the tension,” Riley says. “If something isn’t fun, I question why I’m doing it, so finding or providing the fun in things is a necessity in my life.”
Was it always like this, where the sheer enjoyment supersedes all else?
“Oh my gosh, yes—even when he was little,” Nancy says. “For Riley, it didn’t matter if he was winning or losing, he would be there just smiling. Yeah, that’s Riley.”
Poetry makes Riley smile.
He planned to major in math, but after struggling with calculus and taking English 101 with Professor Warren Rosenberg, he decided to take more classes in literary theory and creative writing.
“Coming to Wabash I never would’ve guessed people would one day be writing articles about me titled ‘The Poet Who Plays With His Prey,’ or that I’d be known as the
‘wrestler who dabbles in poetry.’ As a person whose sole identity was ‘wrestler,’ I have grown into and gotten involved in things I would have never imagined.”
That includes serving as head resident assistant on campus.
“Being an R.A. has made me more approachable. There is a stigma that wrestlers are hard-nosed. I hope the way I’ve approached this position has shown that that’s not always true.”
Riley enjoys the conversations with students, the kinds that trickle back into living spaces from the classroom.
In class, he enjoys challenging discussions the most.
“Keeping an open mind, learning new perspectives, and being challenged with new viewpoints makes me look forward to going to class,” he says. “In a lot of ways it’s like a wrestling match, where each opponent is going to throw something new at you.”
“He’s thoughtful, he’s prepared, and he listens,” says Assistant Professor of History Sabrina Thomas. “He is the most humble, high-level student-athlete I’ve ever seen in class.”
His success these past four years has inspired moments of reflection too. His favorite spot on campus, outside of the wrestling room, is the College Mall.
“The Chapel, the classroom buildings on the side, mall in the middle—it’s something you can look at to clear your mind.”
It’s also the place of his favorite Wabash memory away from the wrestling mat.
“Watching Conner and Reece graduate, seeing all of Wabash there, these people who are all there for us—it was a perfect culmination and celebration of all that hard work.”
The DIII championship match takes Riley four minutes and 52 seconds.
His pin to win vaults the Little Giants into third place in the team standings, marking Wabash’s third consecutive top-four finish at nationals—the best finishes in the program’s 61-year history—and the eighth trophy finish in the annals of Wabash athletics history.
Riley is smiling.
“Everyone wants to be the guy the team counts on to hit a home run with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth. I was just so excited to go out there and wrestle. I didn’t feel a weight on my shoulders. I worked hard for this one.”
And the next one? His immediate goals include wrestling his way onto the U.S. National team and a shot at the 2020 Olympics.
After that?
“I’d love to coach,” Riley says. “I know the impact coaches have had on me, and I’d like to do that for others.”
But first, there’s a wedding.
“Marriage comes first; I’m really excited for that.”
“We’re gonna be like Johnny and June/Singing our vows in Jackson,” he writes.
Riley and Madison have known each other since middle school. There’s tenderness in his words for and about her not found elsewhere in his writing.
It didn’t take long to love a girl like you. I knew that first night by the fire where in your eyes I got lost and where in your hand I felt at home & I have ever since.
“After that is the real world,” Riley says, “which is scary but exciting.”
He leaves Wabash a better place than he found it.
“That whole family has helped us raise the bar,” Anderson says. “They’ve been a huge part of
changing our entire program.”
“There is no way I’m here without Reece and Conner,” Riley says. “They’ve helped me every single day.”
“Riley has done this and I’ve reaped the benefits,” says Reece. “It’s awesome to have someone from your family go out there and kick some butt. It’s a been blast.”