In Bounds
Patrick Hite
patrick@augustafreepress.com
It may be one of the strangest photographs you'll ever see.
Visit the Web site for World Wrestling Entertainment (www.wwe.com), and there's a picture of some of the organization's biggest stars: Ric Flair, The Hurricane, Victoria, Shelton Benjamin and Shawn Michaels.
And right in the middle of the bunch is Ed Gillespie.
Now, if you are a fan of the WWE, most likely you know those first five names. And if you're a fan of politics, you probably know Gillespie, the chairman of the Republican National Committee. If you know both, however, that's a pretty rare accomplishment.
But the WWE would like to change that. It's one of the reasons the organization started Smackdown Your Vote! - a nationwide campaign to encourage young people to vote and become more active in the political arena.
As part of that campaign, Chris Nowinski, a rising WWE star, paid a visit to Monticello High School in Charlottesville Friday.
Nowinski is one of those rare few. He graduated from Harvard summa cum laude in 2000 with a bachelor's degree in sociology. Often he and his college roommates found themselves debating political issues. And while he cared about many of those issues before college, it's his experiences at Harvard that he credits with helping him find a real passion for politics.
"I learned a lot there," Nowinski told The Augusta Free Press following his speech at Monticello. "I learned to really care because if you go to a place with a lot of motivated young people, you become motivated yourself."
Current events in Nowinski's life - whether it's paying for prescription drugs or watching as friends go off to fight in the Middle East or paying off his college loans - have led him to become obsessed with politics in last year. The 25-year-old said he's always reading or talking about political issues, and is more aware now than ever of the impact those issues have on his life.
So with that background, how did Nowinski end up in the wrestling ring?
Growing up in Arlington Heights, Ill., Nowinski wasn't allowed to watch wrestling. He didn't become a fan until watching it with his friends in college, but even though he came late to the party, he was immediately hooked.
After college, the all-Ivy League defensive tackle for Harvard's football team tried out for the National Football League, but wasn't able to catch on with a team. Instead, he found work as a biotech and pharmaceutical consultant. And in his free time, Nowinski attended Killer Kowalski's wrestling academy.
In 2001, he was invited to participate in MTV's Tough enough wrestling-reality show. Nowinski finished as a runner-up to Waynesboro's own Maven Huffman in the contest for a contract in the WWE - but although a WWE contract didn't come his way as a result of that show, he knew that wrestling was his future.
Nowinski proved himself on the independent circuit - his gimmick was portraying a snobbish Harvard elitist, even going by the name Chris Harvard until the university objected - and eventually the WWE came calling, offering him a contract.
After some initial success, Nowinski has been out of action for almost a year with post-concussion syndrome, a fancy name for migraine headaches and memory problems caused by head injuries from his football and wrestling careers.
With time on his hands and an interest in politics, Nowinski thought he was a natural for Smackdown Your Vote!.
"I think it's very important to get people involved in the political process at a young age and to get people to care," Nowinski said. "My demographic - 18 to 30 - is not well represented in either voting or with the issues people discuss."
Nowinski knows that he has to work a little harder to gain the respect of his audience. He figures most of the students that come to see him are looking forward to what he calls a "train wreck."
"You can imagine when they looked on the form and saw a wrestler was going to come here and talk politics, they were probably going, 'Oh my god,' " said Nowinski.
But whatever they thought beforehand, the students seemed to relate to what Nowinski had to say.
"I thought it was very informative," said Will Dorsey, a Monticello senior who, after the event, visited the voter-registration table set up in the school's cafeteria and signed up to vote. "He answered most of the questions. I think people wanted to ask more questions ... but I thought it was pretty good."
Brad Buck, also a Monticello senior, said, "He definitely had some voice of what we all thought. He's several years older than we are, but he has our same views."
The event at Monticello was sponsored by the University of Virginia's Center for Politics as a kickoff to the National Symposium on Youth Civic Engagement.
Billy Haun, Monticello's principal, thought Nowinski was very well informed about the issues and honest in answering the questions posed by the students.
"It was a good role model for them to see. Someone that's in wrestling and who has played football, but has also been to Harvard ... to come and to be as well informed about public views and all of the political issues as he was, I thought it was very good for the kids," Haun said.
Following Nowinski's appearance at the high school - he ended the event by signing autographs, including a lot of yearbooks - Nowinski was on hand at Charlottesville's Fridays after Five concert series to introduce the featured band, the Guano Boys, and work the voter-registration table.
His next appearance for Smackdown Your Vote! will be in a couple of weeks when Nowinski visits with the League of Women Voters in Washington, D.C. And he hopes to increase his number of appearances as this fall's presidential election approaches. Because while he'll continue to work hard to get back in the ring, right now he thinks he's found an even more important goal - encouraging young people to vote.
"I don't think we want to end up 20 years from now saying the world we wanted to have is no longer attainable because of the decisions being made now," Nowinski said. "So we need to get our voice in now."
Patrick Hite is a regular contributor to The Augusta Free Press.
What do you think? Share your thoughts on this story at sports@augustafreepress.com.
(Published 05-24-04/Sports)
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