South River junior Jameson Gerrity was out for redemption during the Seahawks’ December 10 tri-meet with Severn Run and Glen Burnie after having gotten pinned in his initial varsity bout against Marriotts Ridge.
Gerrity’s previous two years of junior varsity dominance comprised an overall record of 41-5 (16 pins) and an Anne Arundel County title at 126 pounds, but the 132-pounder wanted to prove himself worthy not only of the rise in weight, but also, the step up in competition.
Gerrity made vindication look easy that night, scoring an 11-3 major decision against Glen Burnie after leading 11-0, and then nailing down a second-period fall against Severn Run after leading, 9-0.
But Gerrity will tell you that he is not only fortunate to be wearing a South River uniform, but blessed and fortunate to be alive. Gerrity barely survived his first three months, let alone well over 20 surgeries and procedures, many lasting more than five hours. One operation involved removing a piece of the skull to access his brain.
Gerrity was born with major midline defects, including a crack in his skull, called a basal encephalocele, that caused his brain to seep into his naval cavity. Gerrity also has a cleft lip, was missing the middle part of his brain, called agenesis of the corpus callosum, and has been visually impaired since birth due to congenital conditions.
Before his birth, doctors told Gerrity’s parents he would likely live with them forever, have no coordination and be mentally challenged.
“For me, it’s all about living life to the fullest,” said Gerrity, 17, who had his appendix removed when he was 13. “I’ve gotten a lot of second chances, and I don’t want to waste them. I’m not trying to waste any of them. I want to make the best second chance I’ll ever get.”
Gerrity is “totally blind,” in his right eye as a result of “Coloboma,” a condition that occurs when tissue in the eye is missing or doesn't develop properly during pregnancy. There is cataract which is the clouding of the eye lens that can lead to vision loss, and Gerrity has a severed optic nerve. Gerrity also has coloboma in his left eye and astigmatism that resulted in very limited vision in that eye as well and no peripheral or downward vision.
Gerrity’s accomplishment is even more astonishing given his difficulty breathing from the age of 8 and throughout last season until last March, when he had reparative surgery on both nostrils.
“The season before this, it was a lot more difficult using a mouth guard, and it was very difficult to breathe out of my mouth. My stamina and my endurance wasn’t good, so I just had to grind through matches. It ended well, but it was a lot tougher than most people understand,” Gerrity said.
“When I was sleeping, I had to do it with my mouth open the entire time. When I was eating, I could barely close my mouth whenever I was eating. A lot of people noticed it, but they weren’t thinking, ‘Oh, he can’t breathe with his nose.’ They would just say, ‘close your mouth.’”
Gerrity endured on the mats, nevertheless, over his first two seasons as a 126-pounder for the Seahawks, going 11-4 as a freshman with four pins. As a sophomore, Jameson’s record was 30-1 with 12 pins, culminating with the JV county title.
Named Outstanding Wrestler at JV counties, Gerrity out-scored his opposition by a combined, 30-2, comprising a pair of 13-1, and 9-0 major decisions, a 1-0 victory in the semifinals and another of 7-1 in the championship match.
“I went undefeated in my dual meet matches. I was also able to win the South River tournament. At the Blair tournament, I went 4-0 and out-scored my opponents, 33-4. I didn’t even know about my breathing problems until the doctor said, ‘Oh yeah, he can’t breathe out of either of his nostrils.’ Since the surgery, I absolutely feel more energized in the practice room with my teammates,” Gerrity said.
“They say things like, ‘I’m trying my best, but I can’t keep up with you, right now. You’re pushing me to my brink, and I can’t continue.’ But other people have had their entire lives to breathe out of their noses to get all of their endurance and speed figured out, but I’ve had to start from ground zero, building up to the point where I have this strength, speed and endurance. Last year ended well, but I’m still working my way up the ladder. This is just another challenge that’s being thrown at me, and I just have to overcome it.”
Gerrity’s 29th-year coach is John Klessinger, whose 12th-ranked Seahawks lost a clash of defending state dual meet champions last season to Class 3A title-winner Linganore. The Seahawks are currently 6-0 in dual meets and play host to the South River Tournament this weekend.
“Jameson has excelled through challenges most of us will never know. Despite all of what Jameson has had to overcome, he maintains a positive presence in the room. Every day, he’s working to improve. It’s a very cool thing to see,” said Klessinger, who earned his 500th career victory against Glen Burnie. “What Jameson has done so far is amazing, he’s doing everything right. I think what he has yet to accomplish will be a surprise even to himself. I’m expecting many awesome things to come his way.”
The “more energized” Gerrity’s current record is 4-2 with two each in pins and major decisions. Gerrity was ahead, 9-0, and 10-0, before pinning his rivals, and his major decisions were by scores of 11-3, and 8-0.
“My surgery in March finally allowed me to breathe through my nose. I try to keep the pressure on, and to be technical. I use my stamina to attack and defend from lots of positions,” Gerrity said. “I worked hard over the summer on increasing my stamina and technique. Going to major tournaments in Pennsylvania helped me to grow.”
Jameson’s teammates have taken notice.
“Jameson undergoes adversity every day,” said second-ranked Busayo Balogun, a 285-pound returning third-place county finisher who was runner-up at the regional and Class 4A-3A state tournaments. “What Jameson does is that he comes back even harder day after day. Jameson is one of the hardest-working wrestlers I know.”
Gerrity and his opponents must begin a match by touching palms, according to Bruce Malinowski, a veteran referee for 33 years who has been Maryland wrestling’s state rules interpreter for the past 20.
“Contact must be maintained throughout the match,” said Malinowski, a 1979 graduate of Kenwood where he was a two-time state champion. “If contact isn’t maintained, the referee has to blow the whistle and stop the action in order to get the wrestlers back into contact.”
The contact rule is neither an advantage nor a disadvantage, particularly from the neutral position, Gerrity said.
“If I’m winning, there’s no opportunity to break contact because I can’t stall. I can’t cut someone in order to try and take them down again because as soon as I cut them, we have to start back touching. I can’t back away as other people can do if they’re in a match,” Gerrity said. “So, cutting a person from the standing position can’t be part of my strategy. On the other hand, my opponent has to maintain contact with me. So, if I’m down by one, two or even three points, I can still come back because neither of us can back away, so, stalling is almost non-existent. I don’t see the touch rule as an advantage either way.”
Gerrity can’t see the clock during matches, so he manages time by relying on Klessinger’s direction.
“I just keep on wrestling until the referee taps me on my shoulder and says, ‘clock’s over,’ or I’ll hear my coach say, ‘10 seconds left,’ or otherwise give me the short-time information,” said Gerrity of Klessinger. “He won’t tell me if there’s a minute left, because a full minute is too long for me to keep track of. When there’s a shorter amount of time, I can count that off in my head. Otherwise, I just keep grinding, wrestling and pushing the other guy. I can’t see the scoreboard either, so I keep track of that in my head and listen for coach”
The second-born of four children to Kevin and Nadine Gerrity, with two sisters, Seton, 19, and Tierney, 16, and a brother, Lochlan, 13, Gerrity was three months old when he stopped breathing during a procedure and had to be resuscitated.
At the age of six months, Gerrity was determined to be blind in his right eye. At nine months, Gerrity endured a major craniotomy. Gerrity developed Meningitis, a potentially fatal infection that causes inflammation of the membranes that cover the brain and spinal cord. Gerrity’s meningitis detrimentally affected his forehead bone to the point where it had to be removed and replaced with an artificial one which forced his eyes to be set apart.
“They had to remove his face and then had to split his head on either side to almost basically crack an egg, lift out the brain and take a piece from the back of his skull to seal the crack up front,” said his father, Kevin Gerrity. “It was like sheet-rocking and plastering a wall. Then, they put the brain back in and put Humpty Dumpty back together. It was a 14-hour surgery from the time they went in until the time he came out of it.”
Gerrity was also nine-months old when he developed diabetes insipidus, experiencing a 105-degree temperature and febrile seizures.
“Although we didn’t know it at the time, it was Meningitis causing the temperature spikes and febrile seizures. The diabetes insipidus somehow resolved itself. No one knows how or why. But the meningitis had infected his entire forehead bone to the top of his head,” Kevin Gerrity said. “The doctors tried to save the bone by repeatedly taking it out and trying to decontaminate it, but eventually, the meningitis was too much in the bone. Then Jameson lived without a skull for approximately two years, had his plastic forehead implanted when he was approximately three years old, and had that replaced again when he was approximately 12 years old.”
The seizures plagued Gerrity until he was six years old.
“Jameson would get them every so often. He would spike a fever, and it would happen. We would put him in an ice bath to cool him down,” Kevin Gerrity said. “If he started having a seizure, we would have to take him to hospital for an [intravenous therapy] medicine. The seizures just stopped one day and never came back.”
Gerrity’s facial features often drew negative attention. As a 6-year-old, one child called him an alien.
“I’ve always had a protective streak toward Jameson, which is an unsurprising characteristic of an older sister,” Seton said. “Whenever people would stare at Jameson, I would stare right back, making the most intense eye contact possible to assure that they felt uncomfortable.”
Gerrity spent nearly two years without a forehead before it was replaced with the artificial one he lives with now. It was a precarious situation given the threat of meningitis when exposing the dura, the tough, thick, outermost layer of tissue that covers and protects the brain and spinal cord.
“When he did not have a forehead at all, we had to watch that he did not take any major blows to the head, but the dura under your skull is a tough leathery like substance,” Kevin Gerrity said. “Think of the outside of a football. But Jameson could put his finger into his head, and we would call it his squishy.”
Gerrity found brotherhood and solace in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, all of this in spite of the physical risks involved.
“I started doing jiu jitsu as a 4-year-old, and the one thing I loved about it was the culture and the teammates I had with the way they welcomed me. The guys in the jiu jitsu gym were all really nice, and they wanted me there. That hadn’t really happened until then. Up to that point, it was me being different,” said Gerrity, reflecting on his looks with a plastic prosthetic forehead.
“Normally it was people shying away from wanting to talk to me and staring at me. The owner, Danny Ives, and all the coaches knew about all of the surgeries, but I never got any special treatment. I was just another kid on the mats. They made me work for everything I accomplished and didn’t take it easy on me. They didn’t want to treat me any differently. They all pushed me, knowing they could drive me into the direction of becoming the best I can be. I had to grind for everything I got.”
Paul Joyce officiated the Seahawks’ tri-meet victories over Annapolis and North County on Tuesday night.
“Jamison Gerrity is an outstanding representative of the South River Seahawks’ program. He is very strong, pound-for-pound, and is always ready to go for six minutes. Jamison is a great rider and uses his technique from the top position very well in working for the falls,” Joyce said. “Jamison has worked hard to earn a varsity slot, and he responds well to the South River coaching staff as he competes. He always demonstrates great sportsmanship and his team rallies behind him when he wrestles.”
Nadine Gerrity is inspired by her eldest son.
“Jameson’s journey, his development as an infant and a toddler was not typical, but he had the will and the drive to not fall behind. In some ways, he excelled in the human race through that atypical journey. Jameson has been grounded,” Nadine Gerrity said.
“Jameson has grown through the encouragement, expectations and love that his family, friends, teachers, and coaches have given him throughout the years. As his Mom, I am proud of him every day. I believe how he shows up, in school, in the classroom, on the mat has had a positive impact on so many more people than he realizes.”
One of those people is Stephen Decatur junior Elijah Collick, a two-time Class 2A-1A state champion. Ranked No. 2 by Legacy Wrestling, Collick pinned Jameson during the Seahawks’ 41-33 dual meet victory.
“We actually didn’t know anything until about five seconds before the match when the referee told us [Jameson] was visually impaired,” Collick said. “I have a lot of respect for Jameson pushing hard and not allowing his disabilities to hold him back. Wrestling is a tough sport, and Jameson helps to set a high bar for the term, ‘No excuses.’”
Another is Seahawks’ teammate Sam Travis, a 165-pounder who is 2-0.
“With Jameson being my neighbor, we began to carpool often. Talking to him about his Brazilian Jiu Jitzu background and watching him wrestle, I could tell he had a knack for grappling, and he had a lot of potential,” Travis said. “When Jameson wants something, he goes nose to the grindstone and until he achieves it. Jameson has endured a lot of hardships in his life, but that’s shaped him into who he is, which is an absolute beast.”
Gerrity has utilized special visually impaired accommodations at South River, where he is a 3.5 student. Gerrity’s favorite class is math.
“I love figuring out problems,” Jameson Gerrity said. “There is always a wrong answer, but, at the same time, there is always a solution.”