By Jim Massie
The Columbus Dispatch
Stephen and Tricia Snyder saw the ad for a local wrestling club in their Woodbine, Maryland, neighborhood 15 years ago, considered the household breakables and decided to take their rambunctious 5-year-old son Kyle in for a test grapple.

[caption id="attachment_13042" align="alignright" width="225"] Visit the National Wrestling Hall of Fame and stand on the medal stand that Kyle Snyder stood on when he received his World Championship gold medal.[/caption]

“He was athletic at an early age,” said Stephen Snyder, a former college football player. “He would wrestle with me. He would wrestle with his mom. He would wrestle with the other kids. He was like a lot of boys: He loved aggressive play. We saw the advertisement and thought that might be a place for him to do that without destroying the house. So we signed him up to see what would happen. Here we are.”

“Here” this week is in Rio de Janeiro, where the Snyder family will watch Kyle represent the United States in the 97-kilogram weight class in the freestyle wrestling competition for the Olympic Games.

A junior at Ohio State, Kyle Snyder is the reigning world champion in the 213-pound weight class. He was 19 years old in September 2015 when he won that title in Las Vegas, making him the youngest world champion in U.S. senior freestyle history.

Snyder followed that by winning the 285-pound weight class in the NCAA tournament for the Buckeyes in April. It was a nice accomplishment for a 5-foot-11, 225-pound ball of energy who now is 20. Olympic and NCAA ambitions never entered the mind of his 5-year-old self. He was having too much fun within each roll around the mat. And besides, he had no knowledge of either.

“I liked wrestling with people even though I didn’t know what I was doing,” Snyder said. “I don’t think anything clicked immediately. I just loved fighting with people and messing with my two brothers.”

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