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Sunday, July 02, 2000 By Lori Shontz, Post-Gazette Sports Writer
DALLAS -- By his own admission, Ray Brinzer lives "as a bit of a transient."
Brinzer, who won three PIAA state wrestling titles for North Allegheny High School in the late 1980s, has traveled the world to look for ways to get better at his sport.
He went first to Oklahoma State before settling on Iowa, where he twice earned All-America honors. He twice traveled to Bulgaria to train simply because he thought some of the world's best Greco-Roman talent lived there; once he lived for the summer in a Bulgarian wrestler's kitchen.
On the rare occasions he needs a break, Brinzer returns home. That's usually twice a year, once to celebrate Christmas with his family and once to participate in the Pennsic War, the world's largest medieval re-creation, which occurs every August at Coopers Lake, just outside Slippery Rock. Brinzer plays a 16th century Irishman.
Now, after he didn't qualify for the Olympic team at the U.S. Freestyle Wrestling Trials, Brinzer thinks the time has come to settle down.
"I'd love to keep wrestling, but I feel I really need to establish myself in life a little bit," he said. "As little as the people who sponsor me talk about it, I feel the need to be independent for my own peace."
Brinzer's Olympic dreams ended with a first-round loss June 22 to Aaron Simpson at 187.75 pounds. He scored the first point, but lost, 10-1.
"I want to win, and as far as if I lose 2-1 or 10-1, it's all the same to me," Brinzer said. "After a certain point, I just had to take risks."
Which is why last year, after three years in Colorado Springs, Brinzer left the Olympic Training Center. Consequently, he decided he needed to switch from Greco-Roman to freestyle, even though a year before the Olympics wasn't exactly the perfect time to adjust to the differences between the styles.
"But the Olympics were the reason I did it," he said. "I felt like leaving the training center, it was going to be tough to get Greco training. In this sport, sometimes you have to roll the dice. I tried to win big at the risk of failing badly."
Brinzer's first stop was California. He lived in the Silicon Valley and worked at a dream job -- a start-up company owned by a former All-American wrestler from Stanford who had hired other wrestlers, mostly Stanford graduates, to work for him.
"We took breaks for wrestling practice," he said. "The president would come in the room and say, 'Everybody stop. It's time for practice.' "
After a few months, however, Brinzer decided he needed to spend even more time in the wrestling room. So he headed back to Iowa.
"I have [Coach Dan] Gable as a resource, and there's a great atmosphere in the room," he said. "Just being there makes you want to work hard. That's a precious thing."
Brinzer isn't sure where he's going next. Or what he's going to do.
Chances are, however, that Brinzer won't take a traditional path to his next goal. Chances are equally good that his next goal is a high one; witness this quote from "Homer's Odyssey," one of his favorite books, on his Web site: "May Zeus accomplish all the good your mind intends."
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