Untold Athletes: Logan Ninos – Wrestling

Logan Ninos is a junior from Northampton, Pa. and is majoring in athletic training. Ninos wrestles at 125 pounds for Ithaca and also serves as the operations chair for IC’s SAAC executive board.

First, I need to thank my parents, Trish and Joel, for allowing me to chase my dreams and supporting me wholeheartedly along the way. Wrestling became a passion of mine around middle school. I started wrestling when I was eight years old and moved to Northampton, Pennsylvania (a top wrestling area in the country). I became involved in wrestling because my new friends wrestled, and I wanted to try it. I quickly discovered my love for the sport, and it put me on the right path to my future. Around the time of middle school, I wasn’t getting the results I wanted nationally, and that is when my mom talked to me about training year-round. I accepted this and started to specialize in wrestling. I loved every minute of it and began to travel all around the country to compete. From Pennsylvania, to New Jersey, down to North Carolina, and over to Nevada, wrestling has taken me to amazing places and has given me the opportunity to meet many amazing people. 

To me, wrestling is almost everything. It is my break from reality, and my natural stress reliever. Wrestling over the years has taught me many life lessons. One of my favorites is that there is no one to blame but myself. When I wrestle it is only me out there; all eyes and the spotlight are on me. Either I got the job done or I didn’t! It is as simple as that. With this, I have learned responsibility and ownership. Another lesson wrestling has taught me is how to work hard. Being an individualized sport, whatever work I put in, I will reap the benefits of. If I do not work hard in practice I will physically get beat up in a match, and no one likes that. So, I make sure I work hard, and I see the benefits of it. Lastly, wrestling has taught me to be disciplined. With wrestling I have to be disciplined with what I eat, how I train and who I surround myself with. These decisions are never easy, but they are what separate the greats from the average. 

A challenge I have had to overcome in wrestling is accepting failure. I have failed countless times, too many to count. In high school, I was a two-district sixth place finisher, missing the qualifying spot by one loss. These were heart breaking losses that I should have won both times. There were many moments of doubt after these matches. I doubted what I was doing, I doubted my coaches, and I doubted my future in the sport. Luckily, I’m a pretty stubborn and head strong person and couldn’t accept the failure, so I got back to work.  My senior season, I took fourth at districts, fourth at regionals, and became a state qualifier. This put me back on the path to wrestling at Ithaca. These failures taught me to become a hard worker. Even when I thought I was working hard, it was obvious that I wasn’t working hard enough. My senior year I was determined to qualify for states and work harder. Once again, everything I worked for was reaped when I accomplished part of my goal. To this day, I try to be the hardest worker in the room whether it’s wrestling or in the classroom, there’s no excuse for not working hard.

Covid-19 couldn’t have come at a worse time for me and my team. We were out in Cedar Rapids, Iowa at the NCAA Wrestling Championships. We arrived Wednesday, settled into our hotel, and practiced in the arena. Thursday came and it was like any normal prep day. We woke up, got breakfast, headed to the arena for a workout around noon, and then headed back to our rooms. We had a team meeting scheduled for 5pm. When I was awoken from a nap at 2pm for an emergency team meeting, I knew there was no good news coming out of it. As I suspected, I was correct and had been told that nationals were canceled 18 hours before competing. This news came as a huge shock to our team and overall was extremely disappointing. We were so close to achieving our dreams and showing all the hard work we put into that season. After this news, we went to have a dinner with all of our families and friends who were in Iowa with us. The night had a weird feeling to it because there were no trophies or records to be celebrated over. We then packed our bags and headed back to Ithaca the next morning. Still to this day we are being affected by the virus and are wondering if we will have a season; this will be decided in late October. My team and I are hopeful for a season and continue to train hard, chasing our dreams. 

The new “normal” for me is challenging, but fun. I first want to give a huge shout out to Chris Hummel, Paul Geisler and all of the athletic training program for taking on the challenges of Covid-19 and finding ways to still provide me and my classmates with top notch education. When we report to class, we must wear provided face masks while sitting at our seats and whenever we are within six feet of each other, we must wear face shields and gloves. We get tested every week and are assigned certain people who we can interact with for hands on material. With these simple precautionary measures, we are allowed to be in person and receive the proper hands on education required to be successful in our field. I wish everyone could be on campus right now and I could be wrestling with my teammates, but I understand this is what is needed to keep everyone safe and hopefully, we will all be back together soon enough. Together or apart, it’s always a good day to be a Bomber!