David Odun-Ayo is not your typical high school wrestler.
The Glendale senior wrestles in the 120 lb. weight class this season, but still bench presses nearly 300 pounds.
“David is so hard to wrestle against,” said head coach Bud Donnell. “He is so strong and he never gives up.”
Also, he wrestles on essentially one leg.
David was born with proximal focal femoral deficiency, and as a result, his right leg is only about half as long as his left. He wears a prosthetic to walk, but doesn’t use it to wrestle.
“We had to make a big decision,” Donnell said. “If he weighed in with his prosthetic, he would have to wrestle that weight class, whatever weight the prosthetic added, and he’d have to wrestle with it on.”
So the decision was made that David would leave it off and wrestle on his knees, which he actually turns into an advantage.
“From middle school, you’re taught, ‘Ok, this is how you take a shot. Here’s a single-leg [takedown], here’s a double-leg. You go for a single, go for a double,’” David said. “Well, when that kid is on his knees, there is no single-leg or double-leg to go for.”
David is a joyful young man, always smiling and quick to laugh. He was born in Nigeria and lived there until he was 10 years old. His mother, wanting better medical care for David and to get her college degree, enrolled at Missouri S&T in Rolla to study electrical engineering. After getting her degree, she got a job at Missouri State and moved David to Springfield, where he enrolled at Glendale his freshman year.
He grew up around sports, playing soccer in the streets of Nigeria, but had no interest in wrestling, at least at first.
“’Coach, I don’t like wrestling,” is what Donnell remembers him saying, with the caveat “as polite as can be.” “Wrestling’s not for me. I’m a basketball player.”
Indeed, all David and his mom knew about wrestling was professional wrestling.
“Wrestling, I had never done any wrestling,” he said. “I had only watched WWE. My mom said it’s scary, nobody should do it.”
Basketball had his heart, at the moment. He twice rebuffed Donnell’s attempts to get into the wrestling room, until Bill Voorhis, then an assistant with Glendale football and a former girls basketball coach, made a deal.
The two would play one-on-one. If David won, Voorhis would help him with basketball and he could forget about wrestling. But if Voorhis won, David had to go out for wrestling.
Voorhis won.
“He hustled me,” David said, laughing.
So David took up wrestling.
“I came to the wrestling team, and ever since that day I have loved it,” he said.
As impressive as David is on the mat—he’s 6-4 through Jan. 7—he’s more impressive off of it.
“He’s involved in every club,” Donnell said. “He’s the FCA president, he’s in—I can’t even name all of them. He’s in a ton of clubs.”
And most impressively, he’s headed to college. Notre Dame, specifically. On a full-ride academic scholarship.
“I have to thank God,” he said. “It’s all God. I actually got a full scholarship to the University of Notre Dame.”
David said he’ll study either computer science or software engineering in South Bend.
When he heads north, David will take his time at Glendale with him.
“If I’m going to leave Glendale with one thing, it’s knowing that it’s a family,” he said. “I have these guys that are here, I have brothers for life, I have sisters for life. I have people that have my back till the day I die.”
And Mom? She’s come around on wrestling.
“She loves, love Glendale wrestling now,” David said, laughing. “She loves everything about wrestling.”
