A moment that changed a boy’s life leads to 51 years of helping other young people

By John Shaughnessy

The laugh comes easily from Frankie Medvescek as he shares the moment in sports that changed his life—a moment that has also helped him change the lives of youths from across Indianapolis for more than 50 years.

He was in the seventh grade at the time, playing basketball at a Police Athletic League Club in the city when one of the police officers called to him and said, “Come over here and wrestle this guy.”

So Medvescek walked over, looked at the boy across from him, picked him up, slammed him down and pinned him.

“The guy raised my hand [signaling he had won], and I said, ‘Man, this is my sport!’ ” he says with a laugh.

Wrestling is the sport that gave this youth from a poor part of Indianapolis an identity and a purpose, and for the past 51 years he has used his love for the sport to make a difference in the lives of so many youths. It’s a focus that led to him recently receiving the St. John Bosco Award, the highest honor from the archdiocese’s Catholic Youth Organization (CYO).

“I never expected to get this,” says Medvescek, a 1966 graduate of Cathedral High School in Indianapolis. “To me, this is the biggest honor.”

At 76, he is still involved in wrestling, serving as an official and offering his knowledge at clinics, continuing to embrace the qualities he has always loved about the sport: the aggressiveness, the one-on-one testing, the blend of physical and mental preparation. Yet there’s one quality of the sport that he appreciates even more.

“You meet so many people from all over,” says Medvescek, a member of Mary, Queen of Peace Parish in Danville. “And you make so many friends. You meet the opponents. It’s like a family. And my wife Suzanne is really into it, too. CYO wrestling brings friendships, and it brings families together.”

He started coaching in the CYO in 1973, in the former Holy Trinity Parish in Indianapolis, getting involved in kickball, basketball, track and wrestling. It was a way of giving back to the parish he once lived close to growing up. At the same time, he found that sports, especially for him with wrestling, are a way of building bridges between people of different races, different schools, different backgrounds.

Through the years, he has often brought together youths from Catholic schools and Indianapolis Public Schools.

“You get to meet the other side. It’s amazing to watch them come together. They have friendships. Sports have a lot to do with bringing people together—and keeping kids out of trouble. Wrestling or any sport makes them a better person when they grow up.”

Medvescek knows the difference that wrestling has made in his life. He says the same thing about his Catholic faith.

“I go to Mass six or seven days a week. And I still don’t think I’m saved. So, I do a lot of these things for free. It’s part of my faith. I see some of these kids with nothing. I preach to them that when you die, you will go somewhere. So, we say a prayer at every meet and before everything we do.”

He plans to keep going, still buoyed by the impact that wrestling made to a seventh-grade youth years ago.

“I see what it does for the kids,” he says. “It’s always been about the kids.” †

 

See more Catholic Youth Organization award winners