Bethlehem's Champ

For all the slapstick and clowning that has wrecked professional wrestling, the honest amateur variety still has its loyal fans. Probably the No. 1 wrestling town in the U.S. is Bethlehem, Pa. (pop. 66,340), home of Lehigh University. Probably the U.S.'s No. 1 wrestler: National Champion 147-lb. class) Edward ("Ike") Eichelberger, captain of Lehigh's wrestling team.

Whenever Lehigh wrestlers travel out of town, half of Bethlehem huddles over its radios to get a hold-by-hold report. When the Engineers take on a visiting team, home-town rooters pack the house. Last week, when Ike and his teammates wrestled with Penn State, some 3,300 fans elbowed their way into Lehigh's Grace Hall, and not until the champ had pinned his man with a reverse chancery and body press did the town relax. Saddened by Lehigh's team loss, 17-13, John Pappajohn, 59, a local shoemaker and undisputed dean of Bethlehem wrestling buffs, took his consolation from Ike's victory. "He wrestle Turkish method," said grey-mustachioed Pappajohn, remembering his own youth in Turkey. "That cross body ride, that is Turkish method."

Only four summers ago, Ike Eichelberger was a skinny youngster who knew little about Turkish or any other methods. Along with a crowd of other high-school hopefuls, he appeared at Lehigh for a week-long wrestling clinic. Coach Gerald Leeman worked hard with him, and helped Ike to get a scholarship (which Ike keeps by holding his engineering grades up to a commendable B-minus). Today the 5 ft. 7 in. champ weighs close to 150 Ibs.

Ike has succeeded thanks to his cat-quick reflexes and a natural athletic gift that makes him a success at almost any game he tries (he took a crack at soccer for the first time in his life as a Lehigh freshman, made the Lehigh varsity the next year). On the mat a wrestler is on his own. There are no teammates to pitch in, no one to call plays, no coach to take him out when he gets tired. Stop-watch-clicking scorers keep track of every move, referees award points on a complicated but precise system of scoring. During four years in this tough game, Ike has run up a record of 34 falls, 14 decisions, one draw, and has lost only three times. In next May's tryouts, he will have an excellent chance of making the U.S. Olympic squad.

This sort of record is not set by brawn alone; in Ike Eichelberger's case it goes with an almost evangelical fervor about athletics--and an athletic fervor about evangelism. "A lot of people don't understand how an athlete feels about religion," says Ike. "They think you sometimes are asking God to help you win, and they misunderstand. It's not like that really. I feel that everything I do is for Him, and that includes wrestling." When a Bethlehem fan asks Ike for his autograph, he follows his signature with the words, Galatians 6:14 ("But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ . . .").

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