State Wrestling Meet : THE WRIGHT STUFF : For Loara’s Chris Wright, There Is No Such Thing as Free Time: He’d Rather Spend Hours Training

Think of the things an average teen-ager likes to do. Raid the refrigerator. Sleep as late as possible. Borrow the car. Land a part-time job. Watch TV.

To Chris Wright, there’s just one problem with those things. They don’t necessarily lead to becoming a better football player, a better wrestler, a better long jumper or a better student.

So, Wright doesn’t waste his time.

To say that he has been goal-oriented during his senior year at Loara High School is an understatement.

He’s been goal-obsessed.

“You could put Chris in any situation and he’d motivate the whole room,” said Loara wrestling Coach Rick Martens, who has guided Wright to a 44-3 record this season.

Playing sports is Wright’s entertainment. Working out is his job. His feet are his means of transportation, and getting from place to place doubles as a form of conditioning.

He rises before dawn to get a head start on his goals. His desire to become the best 179-pound wrestler in the state draws him out of bed and onto the road while most other wrestlers sleep.

“He’s 18 and he doesn’t have his driver’s license,” said his mother, Natha Wright. “He doesn’t have time, he’s so involved with what he’s doing.”

Besides, where Wright is headed, no car can carry him. The only power he’ll have to rely on will be his own.

“I sort of look at myself as a machine,” he said. “I keep going, going, going, going, going.”

Martens teaches psychology at Loara. He knows his subject, from Descartes to Freud. He also knows his star wrestler as well as anyone.

But when asked to describe Wright’s personality, Martens momentarily gropes for words. Then he figures it out.

“He’s so much of an athlete that he’s an athlete as a person,” Martens said.

Wright has the kind of physique that other kids on campus admiringly refer to as “buff.”

Upon seeing his well-proportioned 5-foot 11-inch body, people have been known to assume his accomplishments in three sports came naturally. That’s hardly true.

The frame and the speed did come from his mother, who was a champion sprinter in junior high in Texas, but Wright’s powerful build is a product of his own efforts.

He gained 25 pounds between his junior and senior football seasons through work in the weight room, where he bench presses 310 pounds--a feat that doesn’t come “naturally.”

“He is a self-made athlete,” said John Dahlem, former Loara wrestling coach. “A lot of kids had the same physical tools he did when he started, but nobody has the physical tools he has now.”

Tom Caspari, Saxon assistant wrestling coach, agreed that outsiders sometimes underestimate Wright’s dedication.

“He is not as physically gifted an athlete as people say,” Caspari said. “He has developed it since his freshman year by working out.

“There have been very few people who worked harder than he has. He did exactly what he needed to do to become the athlete he is.”

Wright sits down and writes out lists of his goals. As soon as one goal is achieved, he immediately sets another.

“He’s always been single-minded,” Natha Wright said.

Here are a few of the goals he already has checked off his list.

In the past year, he raised his grades from a C+ to a B.

In 1984, he was named the Empire League’s Offensive Back of the Year, and in 1985, the league’s Defensive Lineman of the Year, an unusual honor for a two-way player at tailback and linebacker.

He rushed for more than 1,700 yards in the two seasons. Wright recently signed a letter of intent to attend Cal State Fullerton on a football scholarship.

“He’s as good a tailback as we’ve ever had,” said football Coach Herb Hill, who has guided the Saxons to two CIF titles and numerous league championships since the school opened 25 years ago.

Last year, Wright was the Southern Section 4-A wrestling champion at 157 pounds and he won the meet again this season at 178 pounds.

“If I wrestled Chris now, you’d have to call the paramedics,” Dahlem said.

In three years on the varsity, Wright has earned enough pins to open a bowling alley. He has pinned a school-record 41 opponents this season and also holds the Loara career pin record.

“That’s kind of my trademark,” he said. “I’m not the most smooth wrestler when it comes to technique, but I have one unique quality--I’m a lot more powerful than most opponents.”

In track and field, his personal record in the long jump is 22-3. This spring, he’s aimed toward the school record of 23 feet.

“I’m the type of person who feels there’s nothing really impossible,” he said. “If there’s something that I want to get, I can get it.

“It’s a matter of sitting down and saying, ‘I want this and this is what I’ll have to do to get it.’ I just analyze it and eventually I’ll end up getting it.

“Anything I’ve ever wanted in life, I’ve had.”

Well, nearly anything.

He did face a disappointment at the Masters meet last weekend, which brings together the best wrestlers from among the 578 Southern Section schools. After placing third last year, he intended to win it this time.

He moved into the semifinals and took a 7-4 lead against John Schneider, a rangy 6-1 San Marcos senior, the son of an All-American wrestler. Schneider, whose record was 27-0-1, rallied to win, 9-8, after Wright was penalized two points for stalling.

Wright beat his next two opponents in the consolation bracket to take third in the meet, but it wasn’t much consolation for someone whose expectations were so high.

“I really didn’t do much out there,” he said, clearly disgusted with the letdown. “I was ahead and I relaxed and I lost.

“I know what I did wrong. There wasn’t anyone to blame but myself. I won’t kick back next time.”

The third-place finish advanced him to the state championships, where he and two other Saxon teammates begin competition today in San Jose.

Wright spent his first 11 years in Fort Worth, Tex. If his mother’s company hadn’t transferred her to Anaheim, he probably would never have set foot on a wrestling mat.

He played baseball and soccer in Texas to stay in shape for his first love, football. “Out there, the minute you can walk, you’ve got pads on,” he said.

But the Wrights moved into the heart of the enrollment area for Loara--a school where “wrestling is the gospel,” as Natha Wright put it.

“It was probably the best thing that could have happened to him because wrestling is a very dedicated sport,” she said. “You have to give up a lot of things--like his free time to hang around with the guys. Instead, he’s running or lifting weights or in bed because he’s so tired.

“Anybody who goes through that couldn’t help but turn out great because you have to have stamina and motivation.”

One Saxon wrestling tradition that has become a staple of Wright’s solo training is running the stairs of a fire escape in a tower at the Disneyland Hotel.

That is the equivalent of running up the entertainment park’s “Matterhorn,” which is 147 feet high.

There are 182 stairs, and Wright--the human elevator--knows every one by heart.

“I’m fanatical,” he said. “I’m crazy.”

Every other night, he steps into the dungeon-like atmosphere of the stairwell with a five-pound weight attached to each ankle. He runs to the top as many as five times.

“You’re running straight up against gravity,” he said. “You have to match the force of a rocket to get off the ground.

“I say, ‘I’m working as hard as I possibly can. No one can beat me.’ ”