Dual Champs

"We just uprooted and left," says Big Ty.

It's 611 miles and a 10-plus hour drive to Rio Rancho, N.M., from Goddard, Kan., but neither distance nor time would stop Ty Caldwell and Ronnie Beard from affording their sons this opportunity.

In the summer of 2004, the fathers of two boys who would become Kansas' biggest prep wrestling prospects made a change. They decided on a Monday they'd make the trip to Rio Rancho and were gone by the following Thursday.

"We had nowhere to stay and a trailer full of clothes and just necessities to get us going," Caldwell says. "We went and rented an apartment and I found a few jobs installing floors."

The Monday after they arrived in Rio Rancho, Ty went down and enrolled the boys in school. His and Ronnie's sons, Tyler Caldwell and Bo Beard, now of Goddard High, started school the next day, beginning a year of intense mental and physical preparation.

See, in New Mexico high school wrestling, eighth graders are allowed to compete at the high school level. So Tyler and Bo in their final year of junior high weren't really in junior high - at least on the mats.

On top of that, Rio Rancho was not just any prep wrestling program. Home to some of the nation's top talent, Rio Rancho wrestling was in the midst of winning five of the past six state championships in New Mexico's largest classification, including one in 2005 while Caldwell and Beard spent a year there.

"The middle school was about a mile away from the high school, and Bo and Tyler had to run a mile through the desert to get to the high school for practice after school," says Bo's dad, Ronnie.

For Beard, the bigger wrestler of the two, the year in New Mexico meant a year to catch up.

"I held Bo back as a kid, and that will allow him to graduate as an 18-year-old," says Ronnie. "The trip to New Mexico allowed him to mature, and that was a huge benefit to him as a bigger wrestler."

"We did nothing but train for a year [in New Mexico] and to this day I think those were the hardest practices I've ever been to," remembers Tyler.

Like monks strengthened by a penitential journey through the desert, Tyler Caldwell and Bo Beard trekked back to Kansas in 2005, and their New Mexico experience paid immediate dividends. Both finished off undefeated freshman seasons at Goddard High in 2006 with individual Class 6A state titles, leading the Lions to a team state title.

What made Beard and Caldwell so special that year?

"Tyler Caldwell, top to bottom, can go with any strategy he wants and make it effective," says Craig Adams, a veteran coach in the local youth wrestling ranks. Adams heads up the Bishop Carroll junior wrestling program and watched both Caldwell and Beard grow into indomitable forces on the mats. "With Bo, he's just so tactical and he's really good on his feet.

"The one characteristic they both share is their ability to work harder than anyone else."

The fact that Beard wrestled at the high freshman weight of 152 pounds and didn't lose is the most arresting mark of his career. Not even Romero Cotton, one of the state's best of all time now wrestling at Nebraska, competed at 152 pounds as a freshman when he won his first state title, weighing in at 145. Beard also possesses friar-like discipline, as he was still wrestling at 160 pounds last season for this third state title.

"Beating 152-pounders that were seniors was great," says Bo. "I got more confident as my freshman year went along."

Caldwell and Beard weren't invincible, however. As sophomores, both suffered the first losses of their career - Caldwell at the Derby High tournament and Beard to Andale's Judd Schroeder.

"I have a lot of competitiveness, and I don't like to lose," says Caldwell. "That's actually what brought me to wrestling. I played football in middle school and our team always got beat, so I moved to wrestling so I could win in an individual sport."

The two recovered from the losses and won state titles again in 2007 and 2008. In 2008, Beard cruised to his third title, winning the state final by a 12-1 major decision. Both enter their senior seasons with a chance to become four-time state champs.

"We've always told them that hard work is going to pay off," says Big Ty, who along with Beard's father, Ronnie, has put in his own fair share of hours. "It's just like Ronnie used to say, 'It's just adding one more brick to that foundation, and once you have the solid foundation, the structure is firm.'"

Caldwell and Beard are now performing above ground level, sustained by the construction of will and strength over the course of years of preparation. They began attending junior wrestling tournaments across the region at seven years old. Ronnie made sure of it, no matter the hour.

"I always had a real simple policy at the Beard house," Ronnie says. "If anybody wanted their kid to go to a tournament, all they had to do was get them in my driveway by about 4:30 in the morning." Beard would take kids anywhere and everywhere that they wanted to wrestle, but on his terms. "The deal was, I'd buy their breakfast and weigh them in. We'd wrestle all day, and I'd bring them back home and (the parents) would pick them up in the driveway again. No kid was denied."

At those tournaments in Oklahoma, Texas and Nebraska, the competition was unrivaled.

"The thing that made (Tyler and Bo) better is that they didn't stay home to wrestle," says Doug Eck, youth wrestling coach for the Brawlers, a club in western Sedgwick County. Eck coached Beard and Caldwell when they were kids. "They didn't go to little tournaments around here; they went places where they'd get their tales handed to them. When you do that, you have two choices: you either quit or you get better, and obviously they've gotten better."

The willingness to lose and learn from it separated Beard and Caldwell from the rest, and their long hours together at tournaments throughout childhood was a catalyst for their friendship.

"He's definitely like a brother to me," says Tyler. "We've been wrestling together since we were five or six and we've lived together for a year."

They train constantly at school and at home - Ronnie set up a mat at home - and each has an ideal sparring partner at the time of their choosing. Who wouldn't get better training everyday against a three-time state champion?

"Everyone always asks who would win between us," says Caldwell. "It's hard to say because neither of us could imagine losing."

Next year the two will have different workout partners. In mid-November, Beard signed with Iowa State after also being recruited by Oklahoma State. Caldwell signed with Cal Poly, a program which had three wrestlers compete for NCAA titles last March, including one who made the title match at 141 pounds.

"It's going to be really tough splitting up," says Caldwell. "At the beginning of the recruiting process we wanted to stick together, but as it went along we realized that most colleges only recruit certain weights that they need that year, and it was difficult to find a college that was looking for both of our weight classes."

Their imminent separation just puts more focus on finishing their prep careers right.

"I'm just ready to go out and win my fourth title," Beard says. "Then I'll be ready to go to college."

There have been 22 four-time individual state champions in Kansas prep wrestling history, but never have teammates achieved the honor together. Those mile-runs in the desert to get to practice molded their character and melded their destinies. Their year in New Mexico defined what they would become.

"They were 14 years old when we left," says Big Ty. "But as far as I'm concerned, they came home men."