SAN FRANCISCO — For his next phase of life, Steve Franklin, a two-time All-American heavyweight wrestler at San Franciscso State, intends to become a fireman. Fires should be forewarned, because if Franklin, the former Middletown High School standout, takes the same approach to firefighting that he did to wrestling, they are a decided underdog.
Franklin, who concluded his collegiate eligibility this past season by placing sixth in the 285-pound division at the NCAA Division II Championships, is in all probability the greatest athlete to come off the Middletown High campus. No one ever set the bar higher.
Witness his high school coach, Troy Brierly …
“He is in the top 2 percent of the most coachable kids I ever had in 11 years here. Other kids were coachable as he was, but not as disciplined and goal-driven. He wanted to be a league (Coastal Mountain Conference) champion, so he did what it took to be a league champion. For three years. He holds the record at Middletown for most wins in a career. He won 132 matches and lost only 31.”
His (Santa Rosa) junior college coach Jake Fitzpatrick …
“We had our best year ever the year Steve was here. He anchored a team that was 13-1 in dual matches and tied Sierra for the Big 8 Conference championship.”
His San Francisco State coach, Lars Jensen …
“Steve was one of our top three heavyweights of all-time in my (27-year) career here. He was second all-time in pins with 87 career-wise.”
Franklin thinks it”s possible he tied the record, counting one more pin in his first year with the Gators. “I thought I had 10 but they only credited me with nine,” he said.
Franklin, in fact, seemed a cinch for Athlete of the Year at San Francisco State, until the unseemly happened at the Gators” sports banquet on Tuesday night. A baseball player beat him out for the award, which means that either the player had talents approaching Willie Mays or it was the greatest miscarriage of justice since the Salem witch trials.
Jensen was grossly disappointed. The Gators” coach, who commands one of the nation”s top collegiate wrestling programs, had tracked Franklin ever since he saw him in a state meet (Franklin finished fourth in the CIF State Championships at 215 pounds his senior at Middletown in 2006). But Franklin was one Spanish class short of four-year college eligibility, which meant he needed to spend his freshman year at SRJC.
Beginning with middle school and ending at San Francisco State, Franklin estimates his career total of matches at more than 500. His wrestling career is definitely over, because his talents are entirely in the collegiate realm and not suited to the international Greco-Roman or freestyle forms.
“Those two disciplines don”t treat him well, ” said his father, Bob Franklin.
“I tried Greco-Roman before middle school, but since then the rules have changed so much that I wouldn”t know what I”m doing,” said Steve.
Yes he was collegiate! Nothing intermediate. But at the NCAA Division II level they never came any better.
“He was a pinning-type wrestler,” Brierly recalled. “One of the things he did better than most wrestlers was he scored when he attacked and he scored when the opponent attacked. So, his defense became his offense as well.”
Pinning, Franklin acknowledged, was his intent from the get-go.
“Oh yeah,” he said with a grin. “Why wrestle seven minutes when you can wrestle three? I always looked for the pin and if it was there I”d take it.”
His San Francisco State coach can tell you that from the vantage point of first-hand experience.
“I used to wrestle with guys when there wasn”t a heavyweight on the team to work against,” said Jensen, who was a fair country competitor back in his student-athlete days. “But he made me quit because he beat the tar out of me. My assistant, who was one of my former wrestlers, didn”t like wrestling with Steve either, because he never quits. He has a long reach and he”s pretty athletic.”
Because of that long reach, Franklin was best from a prone position.
“I never had a very good takedown, so I like to wrestle on the mat,” he said. “I feel really good when I”m down because my arms and legs are so long and I have a lot of leverage.”
Franklin”s style has been remarkably calm. He frequently trumped his opponents with superior thinking.
“He”s a long, gangly kind of guy, not real quick when you watch him,” said Bob Franklin, who was an assistant wrestling coach at Middletown for six years. “He looks graceful, slow, methodical, effortless.”
Very early on, wrestling was not a sport that Steve Franklin took to. Brierly changed all of that. Franklin remembered he was an eighth-grader when Brierly, who doubled as an art teacher, told him, ” ?Hey, you”re going to sign up for wrestling.” I said, ?Aw man, I don”t really want to,” and he said, ?You”re signing up.” I did pretty good that year and I”ve been hooked ever since.”
Franklin”s education in firefighting is limited to a cup of coffee at a firefighting academy. But after he completes two more semesters for his degree at San Francisco State, a firefighter is what he”ll become, much as his grandfather and an uncle were before him.
“I like differences and firefighting is never the same every day,” Franklin said. “I like to use my body in that kind of work.”
Franklin”s white-hot competitiveness ensures that it will be a story of fighting fire with fire.
