This story has been updated to reflect that Edmond Ruth faced two felony charges in North Carolina, but both were reduced from felonies to misdemeanors. A previous edition stated that he faced only one charge in North Carolina.
Edmond Ruth is understanding what it means to grow up.
The former two-time PIAA wrestling champion and his family would be the first to suggest that Edmond must feel the consequences of his own actions and understand why they mattered. He is now largely standing on his own two feet as he fights an ongoing court case and tries to live up to the vast potential he has always shown on a wrestling mat.
Ruth, 21, says he can’t say much about drug possession charges that came from a March traffic stop in West Fairview Township. But he does say that a resolution could be coming soon and that two other felony charges he faced from Avery County, North Carolina, have been resolved and reduced to misdemeanors.
West Fairview Township police said Ruth was first pulled over because he failed to stop at a red light. Police discovered the felony warrant out of North Carolina and took him into custody. East Pennsboro police said they found a mason jar of marijuana in Ruth’s car, as well as brownies made with THC and psychedelic mushrooms.
“Yeah, it seems like hopefully soon things will be coming to a close,” Ruth said by phone Tuesday. “It seems like in the next month to 60 days, things will be finished out. I’m almost completed with all that stuff. It’s been a long, long process, but I’m happy that it’s almost over now.”
Ruth says he has been humbled by what he calls a “fiasco” and is hopeful that he can complete the process soon. He wants to earn a chance to go back to school, study and compete again while he currently works long weeks at his father Ed Sr.’s furniture store.
Along with his legal fight, Ruth is also facing a challenge from home, where his parents, Thanayi and Ed Sr., are supporting their son while challenging him to make a decision for his own future. They figure this is a time for Edmond to learn who he is, and they’re letting him do that on his own.
He moved back to Harrisburg after charges were filed and he was dismissed from Lehigh University’s wrestling program.
“You know what, he’s 21 years old now,” Thanayi Ruth said. “He’s learning to do things on his own a little bit right now. As a mom, he didn’t understand how I feel. It’s a bad situation, but you know what, hopefully he can rewrite his story and get back on track.”
The Clarion Open, which was open to any wrestler up to collegiate seniors and included athletes from Penn State, Navy and West Virginia, might have been the first chapter of Edmond Ruth’s sequel. He offered fresh glimpses of just how far his unique talents could still carry him as a freakish athlete who many believe can be as good as he wants to be.
Unseeded and unrostered, Ruth charged through the 184-pound bracket with one momentum-building win after another.
He capped his run with a 14-6 win over Pitt’s James Lledo in the finals, where he showcased the talents that once made him one of the nation’s top young wrestlers. Hope was renewed for Ruth for the first time since he first faced the possibility of losing wrestling for good.
“It’s obvious to say, but it’s funny that the stuff you worked so hard to get can be gone so easily,” Ruth said. “It feels like when you hit close to bottom, and you say, ‘The only place to go is up.’”
Ruth paid his own way into the Clarion Open and made the three-hour drive to the tournament by himself. He didn’t have a coach in his corner or a warmup partner, and he said he didn’t even have headgear with him. Instead, he pulled one from a Clarion storage closet and strapped it on for the first time in over a year.
Ruth was reluctant to sign up and wrestle in the first place, and he said he was nervous the whole drive. He searched for his focus, confronted the doubts he said others had in him, and surprised himself by beating every wrestler who stood in front of him.
“I sat there and thought about it, ‘Do I really want to drive three hours to go wrestle?’” Ruth said. “Once I bought that ticket, I knew there was no going back.”
Ruth was, quite literally, standing alone on the middle of a wrestling mat looking to prove to himself more than anyone else that he still has what it takes to be an NCAA champion. He had all the nerves but very little of the formal training and conditioning that his competition did, and he still became the talk of the tournament.
From a build standpoint, Edmond looked more like his three-time NCAA champion brother Ed than ever, with the same deadly scramble skills and impossible-to-pin-down hips. Ed emerged as one of college wrestling’s brightest stars at Penn State, then started a career in mixed martial arts, and was recently hired as an assistant wrestling coach at Illinois.
Edmond has been about the furthest thing from that kind of NCAA glory for the past 12 months. There was no Division 1 coach telling him to calm down or barking out necessary instructions. There was just him and a desire to push forward, make the most of his opportunity, and re-establish his name to college programs.
“I didn’t have a coach and I didn’t have a warmup partner,” Ruth said. “I was just running around doing shadow drilling by myself, trying to get myself tired. It was kind of cool because I was doing this on my own, seeing how far I could get with only a little bit of help. I surprised myself that I can get pretty far with it.”
As much as anything else, Edmond Ruth has an incredible way of always putting himself in advantageous situations on the wrestling mat. The next big lesson will be to apply those same skills in his life by owning mistakes and growing out of them.
Only one man can do that for Edmond Ruth.
“As a mom, you want what’s best for your kids, but I keep telling him all the time, you write your own story,” Thanayi Ruth said.
“If you feel you can’t do any better, that’s your story. But if you feel you’re going to do well and you’re going to be a champion, that will be your story. I think he’s making a step in that right direction and trying to put those other things behind him.”