They call Michael Peters the Sand Man, but don’t think his athletic exploits will put you to sleep.
They call Michael Peters the Sand Man, but don’t think his athletic exploits will put you to sleep.
The Maryville student won the USA Beach Wrestling championship last year and represented the United States at the world championships in Turkey, where he finished fifth. Not bad for someone who was coming back from shoulder surgery that forced him to sit out the year before.
What’s the difference between wrestling on sand and wrestling on a mat in a college meet? Peters says the pace is slower, but the surface can be trickier.
“When you beach wrestle, you have to have patience,” he said. “It’s hard to keep your footing, so a small mistake can open up the other guy and put you in danger.”
But he added that moving back and forth between the two types of wrestling is pretty seamless, so he figured he would try his hand on the beach. “I was doing something new, but I told myself it was still wrestling, just on a different surface,” Peters said. “I use what I work on throughout the regular season when I transition to the beach.”
Spending time at the world championship in Turkey gave Peters his first opportunity to travel overseas, and he said it was an eye-opening experience. “I enjoyed seeing a different culture and talking with other athletes about how they train,” he said.
And how did he feel about his fifth place finish? “I don’t want to say I was satisfied,” Peters said. “But since it was my first time, it was a good way to see where I was against the rest of the competition worldwide, and to see what I have to do to keep climbing the ladder.”
Peters, who wrestles at 149 pounds, is a native of Quincy, Illinois, where his father was his wrestling coach. He was encouraged to come to Maryville to work with another coach, Mario Morgan, and was drawn to the school the minute he began his visit.
“I liked the feeling of being on campus,” Peters said. “And I really liked the wrestling program and head coach Michael Denney. Maryville also had the major I was looking for academically, so it was a perfect fit.”
Majoring in exercise science, Peters plans to go into chiropractic medicine — a field he got to know during rehabilitation following his shoulder injury. Along with his wrestling success, he has won awards in the classroom as well.
And though Peters showed promise on the ice hockey rink when he was younger, he realized he had to decide which sport to concentrate on, and landed on wrestling. “It was a good choice,” he said. Saints wrestling fans would agree.