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Fowlerville’s Adam Coon, Brighton’s Myles Amine to wrestle in Olympics

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Fowlerville’s Adam Coon, Brighton’s Myles Amine to wrestle in Olympics

They come from families with rich wrestling backgrounds and will be competing in Paris at the Summer Olympics, so it stands to reason that Adam Coon of Fowlerville and Myles Amine of Brighton had instant success in the sport.

In reality, it took both wrestlers some time to find their stride.

Coon came home with medals in the early stages of his career, only to have it pointed out it was because there were so few wrestlers in his weight class.

He eventually found his stride and became a four-time state champion at Fowlerville.

Amine started wrestling in elementary school, but didn’t take it seriously until just before high school.

Amine is now heading to his second Olympics, the first athlete from Livingston County to qualify for two.

Coon’s father, Dan, was a state champion at Fowlerville and the school’s long-time coach. Coon can’t remember a time he wasn’t around the sport.

“The nice part about my dad being a coach for the high school, as well as the youth team, was getting dragged into the room when I couldn’t even walk,” Coon said. “I was still on the wrestling mat hanging out with other dads’ kids. I grew up on the mats. I’ve been kind of like my life these last 29 years.”

He began competing when he was 8 years old.

“I spent more time probably crying in the corner than I did actually wrestling,” Coon said. “It took me a while to actually get started. Once I did, I saw very little success at all. It took several years before I started winning a few matches.”

As a bigger wrestler, there weren’t many competitors in Coon’s weight class growing up. That meant he usually brought home awards, but so did just about everyone else in his division.

“I would come home with a second-place medal when there were two guys in the bracket or third place when there were three guys in the bracket,” he said. “I’m coming home with hardware. I’m doing a great job. I brought home a medal. The moment I realized it just meant there’s not enough guys in the bracket, I came home and asked my mom if there were only three guys in the bracket and I got a bronze medal, I didn’t really win anything, did I?

“She sat me down and said, ‘You tried your best and wrestled your best.’ She was being a good mother. I took that as, ‘Yeah, I didn’t win anything at all.’”

When Coon got to high school, he was coached for four years by his father. Both men figured out how to navigate the coach/athlete/father/son relationship.

“We had our own little code words we would say to each other,” Coon said. “We would know based on our word choices if it was an athlete-coach talking or a father-son talking. It was really good to have that split, because sometimes you need a dad to talk to and sometimes you need the criticism of a coach without the emotion of a dad. It was great to have that dynamic. It was great to have both in my corner.”

RELATED: Brighton wrestler Myles Amine looking to medal again in second Summer Olympics

RELATED: Gold is the goal: Fowlerville wrestler Adam Coon qualifies for Olympics

Coon qualified for his first Olympics by winning the US Olympic Team Trials in Greco-Roman at 130 kilograms on April 20. He also won the Olympic trials in 2021, but didn’t go to the Olympics because his weight class wasn’t qualified.

Amine, Coon’s former teammate at the University of Michigan, did compete in those Olympics in Tokyo. Not only did he compete, but he won a bronze medal while representing the tiny nation of San Marino. He has Sammarinese citizenship because his maternal great-grandfather emigrated from San Marino in the early 1900s.

Amine’s grandfather, Nazem Amine, was an Olympic wrestler for Lebanon in 1960. His father and uncles wrestled for Michigan. His uncle Sam is a former coach at Brighton.

In all, six members of his family wrestled for Michigan.

It was only natural that Amine would get into wrestling. While growing up in Hartland and Brighton, he had a daily wrestling partner in his brother Malik, who also wrestles internationally for San Marino.

“We were really lucky to have each other, because one of the hardest things in wrestling is to find a partner,” Myles said. “My brother Malik and I probably wrestled seven days a week in our living room. That’s where our wrestling started, in the living room.

“We got on mats when we were 7 or 8. We started competing little by little, nothing serious. I didn’t take it seriously until late in middle school, early high school. That’s when I started turning it on.”

Amine and Coon were encouraged to be multi-sport athletes. Coon was all-state in football, wrestling and track and field at Fowlerville.

Becoming a wrestler wasn’t forced on Amine.

“Something my dad always preached was we should play a bunch of other sports,” he said. “If you’re better or more natural in another sport and you gravitated toward it, so be it.”

Coon will be the first of the two wrestlers to take the mat. The Greco-Roman 130-kilogram competition begins at 9 am Eastern Monday, Aug. 5 with first-round matches. The quarterfinals are at 10:20 am and the semifinals at 3:20 pm that day.

The repechage (“second chance”) rounds are at 5 am Tuesday, Aug. 6, with bronze medal matches at 2:05 pm and the gold medal match at 2:30.

Amine will compete in freestyle at 86 kilograms, beginning at 5:30 am Thursday, Aug. 8. The quarterfinals are at 6:50 am and the semifinals at 12:35 pm

Repechage rounds are at 5 am Friday, Aug. 9, followed by bronze medal matches at 2:05 pm and the gold medal match at 2:30.

Contact Bill Khan at [email protected]. Follow him on X @BillKhan

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