Interview: Alex Tsirtsis

*This is a re-post from an interview I did a couple years ago.**

Hey everyone! This week I had the pleasure of interviewing Alex Tsirtsis. With all of the chaos that is going on throughout our country I am glad we were able to find a way to make this interview work. Please read, share and follow my blog. Once again, I hope you all find this as interesting as I do! 

Alex was born and raised in Griffith, Indiana. He explained how he grew up across the street from Tot park, and how he loved all sports as a child. He said “we frequently used the park as a meeting ground after school, on weekends or on holidays/vacation breaks to play sports with 10 or more kids.” Although he loved to play every sport, he said he was the most passionate about wrestling and baseball. Besides sports, Alex enjoyed collecting baseball cards. He told me, “There were multiple card shops that I would ride my bike to weekly to buy a pack of upper deck cards. You don’t see card shops that frequently anymore, but whenever I drive past a card shop, I can feel the hair stick up on the back of my neck.” I know, and I am sure many of you know as well, the feeling he is talking about. That feeling of nostalgia and goosebumps you get from something that reminds you of your childhood. It could be good or bad (in this case good) and it just takes you back for a moment. It can be a very good feeling!

Anyways…Alex attended Griffith High School. While he was there he was on the wrestling team and “occasionally ran track.” He said “The track team was not very pleasurable. The track coaches had a hard time filling the 4×800 relay so they would ask the wrestlers to fill in the remaining spots on that team. That race is completely exhausting.” Once again, I know the feeling. Going off topic for a second, I ran track my senior year in high school and it was so tiring. I have no idea why I did that. So, I can relate a lot to how he felt. As he said earlier, he was very passionate about wrestling. “I have always been passionate about everything I do” he says, “I began wrestling when I was six years old, so I would say that I’ve loved the sport since I was six or seven years old.” When he was older, Alex attended the University of Iowa, where he continued his wrestling career. If you’d like to read more about his career, all you have to do is type his name into Google and many articles will come up. If you’ve been following my blog, you know it is more about the person than it is about their job or their athletic achievements, so we did not dive too deep into his wrestling career. 

Outside of wrestling, Alex had other hobbies he enjoyed. For instance, he said “I took up fishing a little bit while I was at Iowa. Also, Texas Holdem was extremely popular at that time, so we would have a lot of Holdem get-togethers.” Although fishing and Holdem sound like a lot of fun, I am sure the one thing Alex enjoyed most was attending the same University as his long-time girlfriend, now wife, Tarin. He explained “Tarin and I both grew up in Griffith and we were in the same grade, but we went to different elementary schools. We knew of each other in junior high, but didn’t really start getting to know each other until our sophomore year in high school. We started dating at the beginning of our junior year and we have been together ever since.” Their story is so sweet! High school sweethearts making it all the way to marriage. You don’t see that very often. I know, I know, I’m being cheesy but I don’t care. I’m a cheeseball and it’s a nice story! Today, Alex and Tarin are married with three children. They also live right next door to my grandmother so it has been nice getting to know them over the last few years. They are a wonderful family and so kind to both myself and my family. 

Alright, back to the story! When asked what he does for a living now, he told me “I do a few things for a living. I own and coach a wrestling school named Region Wrestling Academy. We run the academy out of Calumet High School and we began the Academy in 2010. We train athletes from beginners (5 years old) all the way through high school.” I was glad to learn that Alex was able to turn something he is so passionate about into a career. He goes on to tell me about some of his wrestler’s accolades. “161 Individual State Placements, 37 Individual State Championships, 3 Individual Big Ten Titles, 6 Individual NCAA Division 1 All-Americans and 1 Individual NCAA Division 1 National Champion.” Wow. I honestly don’t know what else to say…those achievements speak for themselves. Alex seems like a very down-to-earth, humble man, and it is obvious the wrestlers he trained to win all of these titles are very talented, but you have to give some credit to the coach as well. It is really a testament to how great he is at his job. However, as Alex said earlier, he does many things for a living. He is also a P.E. teacher and head wrestling coach at Mount Carmel High School. He has been there for four years now.

            Alex is a very knowledgeable person. He seems like he would be a great person to learn from. So, I asked him “What is one lesson that helped you in your adult life that you learned from wrestling?” Instead of just one thing he named three. Which is great because I really enjoyed these answers. He said “I would say there are all sorts of lessons and skills I had learned and/or developed from wrestling. The first I would say is overall fitness. Wrestling is extremely difficult physically and mentally, so to be able to stay physically active is pretty easy and desirable. The second is mental focus. In wrestling, you have to be able to focus on the right things in extremely demanding situations. If you lose focus, then your weaknesses become very obviously exploited by your opponent. This completely translates over to life. If you lose focus or if you don’t have a focus in life, then you won’t move in the right direction towards your goals or things you desire. So, wrestling teaches you how to stay focused on the things that make a difference in your everyday life.” I love that quote. It really is a great lesson anyone can use for their every-day life. The third and final lesson he listed is resiliency. He goes on to say “Wrestling teaches you how to be resilient. Wrestling is a very humbling sport, because it is only you and the other athlete out there. At some point, you will be humbled by your opponent and this teaches you how to be resilient. If you don’t learn how to be resilient then you won’t learn or grow from the humbling experience. Again, I believe this thoroughly translates over to life. There will always be humbling experiences in life that will take resiliency to be able to get back on track or force a human to be able to evolve and/or improve in the right way.” I told you guys he was knowledgeable. Those are some really great lessons to learn and apply to your every-day life. 

            When he is not working, or spending time with his family, Alex says he enjoys playing golf. “I really enjoy golfing a lot. I am pretty bad at it, but I enjoy getting outside, enjoying the nice weather, and trying to get better at something.” Besides all of the athletic achievements, Alex says his biggest success he has had is with his family. “That’s a tough question” he says. “I guess I would have to be corny and say the biggest success I’ve had is the life that my wife and I have been able to build with our family.” That’s not corny at all. That’s a great answer. So, as usual I had to ask a goofy question towards the end of the interview. So, sticking with the something we spoke about a lot, I asked “Do you hold household wrestling matches?” to which he replied “We used to all the time with my dad and siblings. Now only with my kids. I’m getting too old to do anything too serious now” he laughed. So, this is the story of Alex Tsirtsis. I found it absolutely fascinating, and I hope all of you did as well! One last thing I wanted to say to Alex is thank you! As I mentioned in my introduction, it has been pretty crazy lately with the Covid-19 virus going around and everybody self-isolating, so I really appreciate the time he took to do this interview and how flexible he was trying to work with me on getting this done. Please read, share and follow! 

Until next time,

Peter