BODACIOUS Rising junior captain Bode Ogunwole, shown here earlier in the season, took home a bronze medal from Vilnius, Lithuania, where he finished third in the Junior World Freestyle Wrestling Championships last week.

After finishing the 2004-05 season with a 22-5 record, junior captain heavyweight wrestler Bode Ogunwole is accustomed to a leadership role on the Harvard wrestling team. But at the Junior World Freestyle Championships last week, Ogunwole found himself in a new position—leading not the Crimson, but the United States.

Ogunwole took home a bronze medal from the championships, which were held in Vilnius, Lithuania, July 5 and 6.

“I felt good that I was able to win a medal for America but I wish it had been gold,” Ogunwole wrote in an e-mail.

Following a loss in the semifinals to Georgia’s Betshana Karanadze, Ogunwole was knocked out of gold or silver medal contention. And his bronze medal opponent, Turkey’s Yasin Kilic, made Ogunwole’s road to the podium as long and difficult as possible.

Ogunwole entered the match still feeling the sting of defeat, and after taking a 1-0 lead over Kilic at the end of the first period, he started to slip.

“I think I was still thinking about my loss in the match before which caused me to start off slowly in the match. For some reason I completely lost all my energy at the end of the second period and losing [the previous match] didn’t help,” Ogunwole wrote.

Though his strength and endurance were failing, his tank was not yet completely empty. As the third period drew to a close, Ogunwole took down Kilic with a three-point move. He was then able to fight off his opponents’ subsequent attempts to regain points and secure the bronze.

Only in victory did exhaustion finally set in.

“I was happy to have won but I didn’t have any energy to celebrate,” Ogunwole wrote. “I just sat down at the edge of the mat, which I have never done in my life.”

Ogunwole’s energy had been sapped by a long tournament, fought against what he called “the best [competition] I’ve ever experienced.”

Ogunwole dropped out of championship contention by falling in clinches to eventual runner-up Karanadze, who won coin tosses for 1-0 advantages in the second and third periods to overcome a 2-1 first period deficit and defeat the American.

“In the second and third period neither of us scored a point in the two minutes so the referee flipped a coin, which [Karanadze] won both times,” Ogunwole wrote. “Basically he was given a far better advantage and he took advantage of it to win both of the periods.”

Ogunwole had opened the tournament by winning three consecutive matches, beginning with a 2-0, 1-0 win over Iran’s Hajinia Osbo Askari.

The tournament’s basic format did not work to Ogunwole’s advantage.

“He had an exhausting tournament for a heavyweight,” USA Wrestling Freestyle Developmental Coach Dave Bennett said. “He didn’t have much time between his matches. He sucked it up when he had to.”