The wrestling room at Bound Brook High School is Bermuda hot — a thick, damp 100 degrees. Deafening ’80s music drowns out the grunts, groans and slaps of flesh against the mats.
Practice has been hard for Andrew Campolattano, New Jersey’s best wrestler, but it is about to get tougher. One by one, over the next 90 minutes, he must try to take down the men who have built him up.
Campolattano locks hands with Bob Doerr, a muscular 44-year-old former Marine who has red, yellow, green and blue tattoos.
Moments later, Andrew Flanagan, a two-time state champion at Bound Brook who recently capped a successful career at Harvard, steps in and tangles with Campolattano.
All the while, Marty Gleason, the godfather of the program, stalks the mats, blowing his whistle and barking.
Campolattano may have grown up without a man in his home, but he didn’t have to look far for father figures. His three mentors are right here, swapping sweat with him on the mats.
Starting tonight, the 6-3, 206-pound Campolattano begins his quest for an elite place in the New Jersey wrestling record books. He is three days and four victories from becoming only the second wrestler in state history to win four high school championships. Along the way, he has won 171 of his 172 matches — with 114 by pin, the most in state history.
But this isn’t really a story about wrestling. This is about three very different men stepping in to the fill the void left by an absentee father — three men who helped turned an emotional boy into one of the greatest athletes New Jersey has produced.
“They’ve been not only his coaches, they’ve been mentors to him,” said Angela Campolattano, Andrew’s mother. “They’ve had a huge impact on Andrew’s life.”
Before Campolattano was molded in that muggy wrestling room, the job fell to his half-brothers, Joe and Mike, who are 10 and 13 years older, respectively. After Andrew was born, his father was rarely around. Angela, who often worked odd hours as a nurse, said there were long stretches when Andrew’s dad just disappeared, including one stretch of seven years. So when Angela was at the hospital, Mike and Joe were playing Monopoly with Andrew and fixing him snacks.
In 2001, when Angela moved the boys from Beachwood in Ocean County to Bound Brook, it wouldn’t be long before Andrew met the men who would change his life.
Doerr remembered watching him play Little League baseball in third grade — a man-child so large he had a special desk at school. But Campolattano couldn’t handle losing, and if he threw a wild pitch, he would ball up his fists, narrow his eyes and stomp the dirt.
“An oversized kid with a really bad temper,” Doerr said.
After baseball season, Campolattano found the wrestling room, where Doerr and Gleason waited. Even back then, Andrew had a wrestler’s body: lean muscles, broad shoulders, a taut stomach. But there were bumps.
Campolattano lost an early rec league match to future high school teammate Nestor Taffur and yelled and cried afterward. Later that summer, he lost again at a tournament in Manheim, Pa., and “was laying on the mat screaming and pounding the mat,” Gleason said. “It was embarrassing to all of us. I’m like, ‘I don’t know if this kid will ever be anything because that is one weird reaction.’ ”
Becoming a Champion
Wrestling is a way of life in Bound Brook, a slow-moving town of about 10,000 in Somerset County. The high school is small even by Group 1 standards with about 500 students, but almost every year it produces Division 1 wrestlers.
Doerr and Gleason are two of the biggest reasons.
Both wrestled after high school — Doerr for the U.S. Marine Corps; Gleason at Franklin & Marshall. And both have spent two decades molding Bound Brook talent.
Despite their impact, neither is officially the head coach, although it’s clear who’s in charge.
Assistant coach Bob Doerr (left) jokes with Andrew Campolattano during a break in practice.
“This is Marty’s program,” Bound Brook head coach Kyle Franey said. “When you say Bound Brook High School it’s Marty Gleason.”
Like all wrestlers who have come through the recreation and middle school programs, Campolattano was fed heavy doses of Doerr and Gleason’s vision. On the long rides to tournaments, Gleason, now 45, would preach the importance of education. On the mats, Doerr would challenge Campolattano to be “the alpha male” — a refrain he still uses.
Gleason and Doerr also kept tabs on Campolattano to make sure he did right in school and with his friends. Gleason, an attorney, focused on keeping Campolattano grounded, humble and aware of his options. Meanwhile, Doerr, who runs a recycling business in Edison, was on Campolattano to stop being lazy, to shape up in the classroom and to narrow his focus.
“Bob was instrumental with that kid’s growth,” Gleason said. “He invests his heart completely in Andrew. I’m sure he’d even tell you Andrew feels like one of my own.”
Once his emotional issues were resolved, Campolattano quickly became a champion, winning state titles in fifth and sixth grade. Soon, Doerr and Gleason would be seeking a new way to challenge their budding star outside of their little town. In the summer before his freshman year, they took Campolattano to Penn State to train. Campolattano’s training partners were Phil Davis, an NCAA champion and future mixed martial arts fighter, and Aaron Anspach, an NCAA runner-up.
“By that time he couldn’t fear anybody,” Gleason said. “He was ready to be a four-time state champ.”
During Campolattano’s freshman year, his father inched back into his life, but it didn’t affect his development. The same year he also bonded with Flanagan, then a sophomore at Harvard. In the week before the state championships in 2008, Flanagan came home just to train with Campolattano and mimic his likely opponent in the state quarterfinals, Tyler Smith of Belvidere.
Smith was a long, lanky wrestler and tough to take down. Flanagan had an identical style. That entire week, Campolattano focused on finishing his takedowns. It carried over into the match with Smith, which Campolattano won, 6-5.
From there, he won state titles as a sophomore and junior to join the thin list of three-time champions. The only hiccup came junior year when he lost the only match of his career to Blair Academy’s Mike Evans, 7-2. Although devastated, he handled the loss with grace.
Then everything stopped with a simple announcement.
I’m playing football in college.
Change of Heart
Campolattano dropped a bombshell on the wrestling world last April when he verbally committed to play football for Rutgers. He did so without consulting Doerr or Gleason, creating a brief rift between the coaches and their wrestler, Doerr said.
By late January, though, Campolattano was replaying his decision.
In an end-of-practice ritual, Bound Brook assistant coach Marty Gleason (red sleeve) puts his hand on top of senior co-captain Andrew Campolattano's head as team members follow. Gleason, mentor to Campolattano, speaks to the team before giving the cheer "Conceive, Believe, Achieve."
After a dual meet against Belvidere, he asked Gleason if he could ride home with him. As the car hummed along, Campolattano turned to his mentor.
“He asked what I thought,” Gleason said. “I said I believe he has the gift — the gift of wrestling.”
Six days later, Campolattano reneged on his commitment to Rutgers and said he would wrestle in college.
Now when college recruiters come to Bound Brook, they sit with the same three people in the Campolattano living room: Angela, Andrew and Doerr.
Gleason will join them when he can make it, and Flanagan is a phone call away.
“Bob Doerr is like a father figure, like the rest of my coaches,” Campolattano said. “They’re all just great. They’re 100 percent committed, caring people.”
