By Rob Sherrill

From the football field to the wrestling mat, Cameron Croy will graduate as one of the more decorated athletes in the history of Brentwood (Tenn.) High.

            Located on the south end of Nashville — in one of the metropolitan area’s most upscale communities — Brentwood is a football powerhouse and Croy was one of the recent reasons why as a three-year starter at linebacker.

            His No. 1 jersey made him easy to spot, but opposing offenses still couldn’t contain him. He racked up 162 tackles and four sacks this season as Brentwood finished 12-2 and advanced to the Class 6A semifinals. That included a season-high 21 stops in the Bruins’ 21-20 double-overtime victory over arch-rival Franklin High in the quarterfinals.

            On the wrestling mat, Croy hasn’t lost since the third-place match his freshman year. He’s followed up that fourth-place finish at 189 pounds with back-to-back crowns in the state’s Division 1 tournament. Croy has moved up to 215 pounds as a senior to try for his third state title.

            He’s excelled on the national stage as well. A two-time freestyle All-American at Fargo, Croy followed up a seventh-place finish in the Cadet Nationals as a sophomore with a sixth-place finish in last summer’s Junior National meet.

            Croy also can write his own ticket academically. He ranks in the top 15 percent of his class. He owns a weighted 4.14 grade-point average (on a 4.0 scale) and scored 29 on the ACT. All this at a school recently ranked Tennessee’s top comprehensive high school by Newsweek magazine and No. 214 in the nation.

            An unofficial visit to Harvard last spring elevated Croy’s sights and his assessment of his own abilities. He also considered Penn and Cornell, but he was sold on coach Jay Weiss’s Harvard program after his official visit last fall. Normally about 205 pounds, he’ll be a 197-pounder for the Crimson.

            It’s refreshing to see how much Croy is enjoying life, as he reveals in this candid interview.

            WIN: You’ve been a success at two sports — football and wrestling — and you’re a popular kid around school and a leader. Is it hard to believe that your high school career will be coming to an end very soon?

            Croy: It’s going to be sad, definitely, leaving high school and leaving a small community where everybody knows you and your friends who all keep up with you. But college will be a whole new thing. It’ll be sad to drop football as a sport. I’ve never focused completely on wrestling before, so it’ll be fun to focus completely on one sport and see what I can do.

            WIN: Let’s talk about that. When did you start wrestling?

            Croy: In the first grade.

            WIN: At what point did you decide that, though football is something to love to do, that wrestling was the sport you’d concentrate on in college?

            Croy: We started thinking about it this year, my senior year. My Dad and I talked about it. I love football to death, so I just went out there and played as hard as I could this year. And luckily, I didn’t have any injuries that forced me to decide between the two sports. But I got to play and I had a great senior year.

            WIN: Did you get recruited much for football?

            Croy: Not that I really knew. I’m sure some (recruiters) asked (head football) Coach (Ron) Crawford about me and I’m sure he probably told them, “Save your time, he’s going to be wrestling.”

            WIN: On the football field, you wore No. 1. Has that always been your number?

            Croy: (Laughs) Actually, no…funny story…I came in my freshman year and I was No. 11. When I came in my sophomore year, some upperclassman already had No. 11. So Coach Crawford gave me No. 1. He said, “Man, just wear it, it’s a cool number.” And I was like, “Yeah, I guess.” I wore it and I stuck with it. I’m glad I wore it. If someone said, “Hey, I’m gonna come watch your game,” I’d just say “Hey, I’m No. 1.”

            WIN: Most kids from this area who are standout athletes in football or basketball or baseball and who also are as strong academically as you are, would be thinking about Vanderbilt. Is it disappointing that to wrestle in college and get the kind of education you want, you have to go halfway across the country to go to college?

            Croy: A little bit, since a lot of my friends are going to UT (Tennessee) or Vandy, and some are going to Chattanooga or Western Kentucky. A lot of guys are going to those schools with their buddies, and they’re telling each other, “We’ll be roommates together.” And I’ll be going to this completely new school, and nobody that I know is going to be up there, unless there’s some coincidence…but I’m not going to be, ‘Hey, I’ll room with you,’ with all the same buddies. It’s like a whole new restart, you know?

            WIN: Do you like that part of it?

            Croy: Yeah, I think it’s going to be awesome, meeting totally different people. It’s going to be fun. It’s like going to camp, but you’re going for four years.

            WIN: When did you take your visit to Harvard and what did you like about it?

            Croy: I took an unofficial (visit) last year in the spring and I made my official visit this year in late September. The first thing I noticed in talking to the coaches was that they weren’t always bugging you about stuff. They were real relaxed about it and said, “We don’t want to bother you too much, but we want you to come up here.” So the coaches were real cool about it.                         When I first went up there, I met my teammates and they were awesome. All the different guys on the team, I could see myself being really good friends with them, just class-act guys, funny and fun to be around.

            Walter Peppelman was my host and I also got to meet their heavyweight (Spencer DeSena) and (174-pounder) Bryan Panzano. Those guys were really cool and some of the other athletes they hung out with were really cool, too.

            The first thing I expected going to a place like Harvard was that there would be some really nerdy people there, but they were actually some of the coolest people I ever met. It was a big surprise. You’ve got everything up there. It’s Harvard. It’s really diverse.

            WIN: Your record in the classroom speaks for itself, but how did you decide that a school as challenging as Harvard was a good fit for you academically?

            Croy: Really, it was when I started wrestling in these big wrestling tournaments and started to get noticed by coaches. And I started thinking that it would be awesome to go to Virginia or Ohio State or Iowa, and my Dad and I started talking to those schools, and it was awesome to see that, ‘Golly, this guy’s coaching three national champs right now.’ Then my Dad talked to somebody about Penn, and Cornell, and I thought, ‘Man, that would be awesome to go wrestle…and get a really good education along with it as well.’

            We were talking to those schools a little bit and my dad said to me, “Hey, let’s go up and see Harvard…either you’ll like it or you won’t.” My Dad just brought it up. He left it up to me and said, “If you like it, try it out…if not, maybe it’s not for you.” When I went up there, it really opened my eyes to how much there is up there, and it really fit my personality, I think.

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