WHITEHALL — As far as Craig Christensen remembers, Whitehall wrestling had never brought in an outside guest speaker in the years he’s been involved with the program until last Thursday. That his old high school wrestling teammate Dusty Mysen was the first showed the respect between the two men, as well as the gravity of what Mysen went through to get there. Mysen was a year behind Christensen at Reeths-Puffer, and while the two are close friends and former wrestling teammates, real life kept them largely separated after school, as it often does. Though he could have wrestled at Muskegon Community College, Mysen went off to Michigan State to study engineering and then to the Detroit suburbs working for Continental Automotive, while Christensen became a teacher and wrestling coach on this side of the state. In September 2020, Mysen’s life took a turn when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a disease he said rarely affects people as young as he was at the time (47). His prognosis appeared bleak enough that the doctor who broke the news said it would be a good idea to get his affairs in order. “The wrestler in me kicked in,” Mysen said. “’OK, I’m going to fight this.’ I went through years of chemo, radiation, multiple surgeries. As I went through it, I relied on my sports background. I’d come home from chemo and I’d hit the gym and work out. That’s all stuff you learn here.” In September 2022, Mysen underwent a successful 13.5-hour surgery to remove the tumor from his pancreas. He has been cancer-free since, and in that short time, he’s developed a desire to give back all the support he received during two years of treatment. He’s working on a book and has addressed the wrestling team in his home school district of Oxford, as well as the youth teams he coaches. His Whitehall trip marked his first speaking engagement away from home. “I’m in the auto industry in sales, so I’m used to talking and stuff like that,” Mysen said. “Craig says it should be a career but I don’t think I’m there yet...The message I want to share with them is really, what they are doing here is hard. Compared to other sports - my kids play basketball, football and lacrosse - what these guys do in this room is tougher than most sports. That’s preparing them for anything they’re going to run into.” Christensen said he generally bristles at the idea that everything in life is easy after you wrestle, “because it’s not.” However, he said there’s certainly truth to the message his old friend delivered. “In some ways it prepares you for hard stuff,” Christensen said. “I just felt like going into the postseason, it’s a good message for the kids to hear.” Mysen said the growth of the Vikings’ program has been remarkable, noting that they were not much of a factor when he and Christensen were wrestling. Over the past 20 years, Whitehall has become one of the preeminent programs on the west side of the state, and it earned a third Division 3 second-place finish in four seasons over the weekend. “That’s a culture thing and that’s a coaching thing,” Mysen said. “It’s kind of cool to come over and see it and get to meet some of these kids I’ve been following (from afar).” Christensen, who has previously said he enjoys coaching kids far more than he enjoys coaching sports, noted that Mysen’s message reinforces the feeling of perspective in high school sports. For athletes of that age, it can be easy to believe no bigger thing than the next game could possibly exist; adults have the advantage of knowing better. “It means a lot to have him come in,” Christensen said. “I think there’s some symbolism of standing in a wrestling room together. We truly haven’t been in a wrestling space together since 1991. So it’s special having him have the opportunity to come in and share his experience with a lot of the boys.” It’s likely Mysen will address many more sports teams as time goes on - while he joked that he’s not trying to become the next great motivational speaker, he said he wants to give back when there’s an opportunity - and his message will be similar when he does. “When everybody picks you up, it really helps you fight through when you’re going through chemo and stuff like that,” Mysen said. “It’s little things, a call or a text or things like that. I think people forget that a little too much. I’m trying to remind people. It has an impact on people and it helps, and it had a huge impact on me.”
