Teammates noticed a different Ben Morgan last season.
"People were coming up to me and telling me, 'Man, it looks like you're just stressing yourself out and what not,'" said Morgan, now a senior wrestler at Forest Lake.
"They were right."
Morgan is rekindling his wrestling passion. He began his varsity career with an emphatic boom as an eighth-grader, upsetting Apple Valley's Matt Kelliher in the championship match at 112 pounds after losing to him earlier in the season.
But with that title comes a target and expectation. Morgan hasn't been back to the finals, posting three consecutive third-place finishes at 119 pounds in 2009 and at 130 the past two seasons.
"My downfall the years before was like, 'Oh, I better win it again. I don't want to let it up this year and look bad,'" said Morgan, a Nebraska recruit.
There was anger with the state semifinal match outcome last spring against Apple Valley's Mark Hall, in which some thought Morgan secured a pin and a victory. He's not mad about any of that and blames himself for not winning the match outright. It was a turning point.
"After that, I just realized, whoa, I need to relax," Morgan said. "It is what it is. Just have to move on and learn from it."
Morgan is ready for a clean slate and a fun senior season under coach Billy Pierce. The Ranger's accomplishments already have penciled his name in the record books as one of the state's finest wrestlers. Considering Minnesota's reputation of developing nationally recruited high school wrestlers, particularly in Ben's weight classes, that holds a lot of merit.
Morgan set the Forest Lake all-time mark with his 196th victory last spring. That record likely will increase significantly over the next few months as Morgan returns to the mat for his sixth varsity season.
"It will be sad to see him go," Pierce said.
He's posted at least 40 wins in each of the past five campaigns, and if he continues that pace, Pierce said it will place him up near Minnesota's all-time top-10 wins leaders.
Morgan's also preparing the next batch of young Rangers wrestlers. Ben helps coach early elementary school kids, including his first-grade brother in the program.
Morgans teaching Morgans is standard procedure. Pierce called the family "wrestling royalty" in Minnesota. Ben's father, Gordyn, along with uncles John and Marty, are steeped in wrestling history with Olympic, world championship and collegiate success. It's easy to see how Ben became so technically sound.
"He learned to crawl on a wrestling mat," Pierce said.
After a couple of years carrying that state title pressure and now moving past that burden, it appears Ben has mentally matured on the wrestling mat as well. Expect a fresh, motivated and rejuvenated Morgan this winter.
"I just want to have fun this year and not stress myself out," Morgan said. "If you're going to be in wrestling, you've got to love it. If you're sitting in wrestling practice, sweating and dying of short breath and you don't love the sport, then I don't know what you're doing in it."
