Not your typical athlete

The story of the secret life of Rick Springman -- the one hardly any of his teammates even know about -- begins way back in seventh grade.

Little Rick, weighing a fraction of the 174 pounds the Penn senior wrestler competes at today, was in a heap of hot water.

He had just been caught getting into the kind of trouble that seventh-grade boys seem constantly drawn toward, and his parents had handed down the maximum sentence: grounded for six months.

But while wiling away the hours in his Norristown, Pa., home, Rick started doing something rare for someone his age.

The youngster picked up a pen and began putting his feelings down on paper.

"I was bored and angry," he said, "so I started writing."

He wrote a lot, mostly poetry, while he served his time. The words gave a release from the walls constantly surrounding him, and it sparked a fuse in his soul that quietly burned over the years even though his pen soon slowed to a halt as his wrestling career blossomed.

That fuse finally hit its powder keg last year, when the true senior took an entire season away from the mat, igniting in Springman a passion for a written art that has, in its own small way, helped the former collegiate All-American regain his dominating form this season and earn one last trip to the NCAA Tournament, which begins today in Albany, N.Y.

And dig this: that wrestling cat also grapples with the spoken word.

"It helps me cope with life, which helps me cope with wrestling," Springman said about the performance art that combines the emotion of poetry with the rhythms of hip-hop. "Not many people have found out -- I kind of keep my two worlds separate. But definitely it's an escape."

Though it's not the kind of escape he planned to get when starting his year-long academic leave from the Quakers in the fall of 2000.

Always one for a challenge, the senior's intentions for the sabbatical were to take a slew of difficult robotics classes and help a team of fellow Engineering School undergraduates build a robot designed to smash other robots to little bits in a Battle Bots-type competition.

But his focus soon turned to other things besides machines.

"I did a lot of different things," he said. "I explored a lot of avenues that I wouldn't have been able to explore with wrestling because wrestling just takes up so much time."

One of those avenues was the burgeoning Philadelphia spoken word scene, which he had been introduced to his junior year while checking out a Linguistics session one night at the Rotunda.

The dark room, the spotlight on the stage, the mic and the words of the artists all fanned the fuse that had been burning inside of Springman for so long.

"I saw that, and I was like, 'Man, I want to be able to do that,'" he said.

No longer constrained by athletics, he exploded into spoken word, finding out where all the underground happenings were taking place and writing and performing whenever he had a chance.

"Every weekend I probably went somewhere," he said. "If you know how to find it, there's a lot to do."

And in just a year, Springman was able to do a lot in his art, not only taking his words to hot events in Philly like the First Friday open mic at the Painted Bride, but up to New York, the birthplace of spoken word.

Guthrie Ramsay, a Penn music professor and Philadelphia jazz pianist, even asked Springman to perform with him at a concert on campus after hearing the senior's work last semester.

"I was just very impressed with him," Ramsay said. "I know he is developing quite a reputation in town and does a lot on the spoken word scene."

And though it didn't condition him physically, the weekly performances -- along with the robotics work -- kept Springman's mind sharp and nerves strong for his return to the mat this season.

He likened many traits of spoken word to those of wrestling, including expression, emotion, improvisation and especially intensity.

"Reading, or even being in the audience, is very intense in spoken word," he said. "And wrestling is definitely intense.

"I think you can see a lot about a person in the sports they play, and you can definitely tell a lot about a person from them standing up in front of somebody and reading."

Moreover, the year sabbatical gave Springman a new attitude toward his sport, one that many on the team noticed when he returned to the locker room this year.

"I think the year [off] was helpful in a number of ways," Penn coach Roger Reina said. "I think really he gained a lot of perspective on wrestling and how it fits in overall with everything. It's led to a real high-level balance."

And it's balance like this that is vital for the six Quakers competing in nationals this weekend.

"Like anybody going into this tournament, it's real important to be very focused and intense during competition, and have the ability to stay relaxed and loose in between the rounds," Reina said. "To be able to keep that balance through the course of the three days of competition I think is a real key."

It's almost like a small slice of life condensed into 72 hours -- doing the important tasks well, but also finding ways to get the mind reset and refocused before setting to them again.

Luckily, all the Penn wrestlers in Syracuse, not just No. 6-seeded Springman, have achieved the balance in life to get through this weekend's rigors.

Just look at Yoshi Nakamura, the No. 2 seed in the 157 pound division. On top of being one of the best wrestlers in the country, he's the president of Alpha Tau Omega, a devout member of his church and enjoys attending cultural events in the city.

"I like to really diversify what I do," he said. "I'm not just a wrestler [who's] not concerned with anything else in life.

"Especially on our team, I think everybody has involved themselves in their own little activities to get away from that."

And even if Springman's competitive balance becomes unsettled at NCAAs, leaving him short of his goal for a second All-American selection, at least he knows his time at Penn -- especially that one year away from the mat -- has helped him grow as a person.

"When I came here... I was 'Rick Springman the wrestler,'" he said. "But now, in my senior year, I'm 'Rick Springman who wrestles.'

"I think a lot of my identity coming into Penn revolved around wrestling. But now I think I've got a lot of other things; wrestling is just a part of it."

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