Sports Illustrated Vault: Ed and Lou Banach
Originally Published in March 23, 1981 issue of Sports Illustrated
By SI Staff
Late last Saturday night at Princeton University, the 10 individual winners of NCAA wrestling titles were patiently posing for the traditional photographs when one of the victors—heavyweight champ Lou Banach, a Distinguished Member inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1994, of Iowa—suddenly became bored with all the formality. So he slipped behind the unsuspecting 177-pound winner, his twin brother Ed, a Distinguished Member inducted in 1993, and threw him to the mat. What ensued was a rowdy rollabout punctuated by great laughter. Said the twins' adoptive father, Alan Tooley, "Energy has always poured out from those two."
The horseplay was a celebration by two 21-year-old college sophomores whose lives had started in a very unpromising manner. The twins are two of 14 Banach (rhymes with panic) children. When they were two years old, the family house in Newton, New Jersey, burned down. "The only thing I can remember," says Ed, "is a lot of smoke and me sitting underneath a tree watching our house burn, cuddled up in a blanket next to Louie."
Their father surveyed the charred wreckage and disappeared; their mother had a nervous breakdown. The 14 children were sent to foster homes. Tooley and his wife, Stephanie, first took older brother Steve (also an Iowa wrestler) when he was five. Then there was trouble keeping Ed and Lou placed, and the Tooleys agreed to take the boys—age four—for just a few weeks. Happily, it was love from the start, and the twins stayed, growing up mostly in Port Jervis, New York. Still, the unsettled early years left scars. Says Ed, "We learned right away to trust each other and fend for ourselves."
And fend for Iowa. The Banach boys were the cornerstones of the school's sixth NCAA team championship in seven years—and its fourth straight. This year the Hawkeyes clearly established themselves as a dynasty. They won the Big Ten title for a record eighth straight time, with a record seven individual conference champs, and they have nine All-Americas. Hall of Fame Distinguished Member Gary Kurdelmeier, Iowa's former coach and now assistant athletic director, says, "This is the finest college wrestling team in history. You pick an all-star team, I'll take the Iowa team and it would be about a toss-up."
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By SI Staff
Late last Saturday night at Princeton University, the 10 individual winners of NCAA wrestling titles were patiently posing for the traditional photographs when one of the victors—heavyweight champ Lou Banach, a Distinguished Member inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1994, of Iowa—suddenly became bored with all the formality. So he slipped behind the unsuspecting 177-pound winner, his twin brother Ed, a Distinguished Member inducted in 1993, and threw him to the mat. What ensued was a rowdy rollabout punctuated by great laughter. Said the twins' adoptive father, Alan Tooley, "Energy has always poured out from those two."
The horseplay was a celebration by two 21-year-old college sophomores whose lives had started in a very unpromising manner. The twins are two of 14 Banach (rhymes with panic) children. When they were two years old, the family house in Newton, New Jersey, burned down. "The only thing I can remember," says Ed, "is a lot of smoke and me sitting underneath a tree watching our house burn, cuddled up in a blanket next to Louie."
Their father surveyed the charred wreckage and disappeared; their mother had a nervous breakdown. The 14 children were sent to foster homes. Tooley and his wife, Stephanie, first took older brother Steve (also an Iowa wrestler) when he was five. Then there was trouble keeping Ed and Lou placed, and the Tooleys agreed to take the boys—age four—for just a few weeks. Happily, it was love from the start, and the twins stayed, growing up mostly in Port Jervis, New York. Still, the unsettled early years left scars. Says Ed, "We learned right away to trust each other and fend for ourselves."
And fend for Iowa. The Banach boys were the cornerstones of the school's sixth NCAA team championship in seven years—and its fourth straight. This year the Hawkeyes clearly established themselves as a dynasty. They won the Big Ten title for a record eighth straight time, with a record seven individual conference champs, and they have nine All-Americas. Hall of Fame Distinguished Member Gary Kurdelmeier, Iowa's former coach and now assistant athletic director, says, "This is the finest college wrestling team in history. You pick an all-star team, I'll take the Iowa team and it would be about a toss-up."
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