2026 Chesterton Athletics Hall of Fame: Jim Popp, Class of 1982, the school’s first state champion wrestler, has the wrestling community fired up to honor one of its all-time greats

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Nothing like the first time and that helps to explain why getting honored at halftime of Friday night’s season-opening football game vs. Hobart and again at Saturday night’s induction Hall of Fame banquet didn’t suffice as far as the Chesterton wrestling community is concerned.
Popp will also be the man of the hour at a wrestling reunion picnic Saturday at Coffee Creek Pavilion on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
As a junior in 1981, Popp defeated Scott Harris of Beech Grove, 15-3, to earn the ultimate three-word badge of toughness for a high school athlete: state champion wrestler.
More than winning the state title at 119 pounds and placing third as a freshman, when he was a 98-pound strongling, make Popp so revered by fellow elite wrestlers.
The fact that he competed in the postseason at all in 1982 also makes him estimable.
As a senior, Popp came down with pneumonia on the brink of the sectionals, won that event, advanced through the regional and was not eliminated until the semi-state round, by which time his lungs still didn’t feel completely empty but his gas tank was.
Several Chesterton wrestling alumni are coming to town to celebrate their friend.
“I’m looking forward to seeing all those crazy guys,” Popp said in a phone interview from Lafayette, where he works a factory job. “Hopefully nobody goes to jail. You can’t get too many wrestlers together, old or young, because they all think that they can take anybody.”
In Popp’s case, he almost always was right about that. He went 31-3 his senior year and many of those wins came in matches by scores close to 31-3 because the technical fall that ends a match if a wrestler goes up by 15 points had not been implemented yet.
Tim Walsworth, friends with Popp since they were in fourth grade and closer friends once they became wrestling partners at daily high school practices, had a matside view of Popp’s historic achievement. Walsworth was runner-up at 142 pounds, two matches after Popp’s, hence the access to the best view in the building.
"He annihilated him," Walsworth said of Popp's title match. "It was a beatdown."
One of many.
“Jim had every genetic gift you could possibly hope for if you were an athlete,” Walsworth said in a phone interview from his home in Colorado. “He was unbelievably strong. He might have been naturally strong, but he would also do a lot of lifting. We did a lot of strength training. The guy was ungodly strong and he would get stronger fast as soon as he started lifting. And he was crazy fast and then he had an endurance capacity that you don’t usually see in guys that fast.”
Chesterton’s first wrestling champ brought more than physical gifts to the mat, according to Walsworth.
“The other thing with Jim on the wrestling mat, he was unbelievably competitive,” said Walsworth, who wrestled at Indiana University in Bloomington. “You were not in for a fun time if you were wrestling against him and you were at his weight.”
John DeHart, a 1982 state champion, Robin Haddox, Popp and Walsworth won DAC titles in ’81, so Coach Bob Trzeciak’s wrestling room was flush with talented, driven athletes in those days, all mindful of making each other better.
“We would go to different camps when we were young and we’d bring back the moves we learned there and everybody shared that stuff,” Popp said. “We did that forever.”
For example, he said Walsworth and DeHart brought back a headlock series from an IU camp led by then Hoosiers head coach Doug Blubaugh, an upset gold medalist in the 1960 Rome Olympic Games.
“We drilled that to death,” Popp said. “That was actually kind of fun.”
Especially so because it led to winning matches.
“It was fun beating up on people when you’re in shape. You’re like, ‘There’s nothing you can do about this.’ You have to have that attitude,” Popp said. “We used to actually sort of choreograph our matches to a certain extent.”
The choreography often called for building a big lead in the first period, adding to it in the second and going for the pin in the third. That way, the wrestlers would get more mat time.
“We actually weren’t very rough. We were actually more smooth with our technique,” Popp said.
Rough can be such a relative term.
“Every once in a while we used some forceful moves,” Popp said. “Like a crossface isn’t really a crossface. It’s more like a push their nose in their face as deep as it can get. You didn’t run it across the face, you just pushed it. You pushed their nose straight in their head. We all did that.”
So, to hear Popp tell it, “pushnose” would be a better name than crossface.
Popp explained how in the world he wrestled in the state tournament coming off a bout with pneumonia.
“Oh, you just do it,” he said. “You set up your fastest pinning time. There’s an out-of-shape strategy. You just suck them into something and get them in an easy pinning combination.”
For example?
“A spladle’s a good out-of-shape move. You just leave your leg out there a little bit,” he said. “They come in, they grab it, the next thing you know, they’re in a banana split cradle. Then it’s over. They’re done. Curtains.”
Popp is looking forward to more than reuniting with former teammates.
“I’ve been living here (Lafayette) since ’96,” he said. “That’s almost scary. I miss the lake.”
Not that he hasn’t enjoyed himself in Lafayette.
“I bought a bar in I think 2015 and we had just gotten a lot of customers and got rid of the ones we didn’t want coming there and then COVID shut us down,” he said of the establishment named Popp a Top. “We were having a lot of fun and then all of a sudden, boom, it was over.”
He said he expects to have a lot of fun this weekend and not just with former teammates.
“I’m looking forward to seeing Wedge,” he said of football player/shot-putter Rick Fulton. “Man, that dude was a big high school kid. We could have used him. We could have made him into a wrestler because he was athletic. He would have been a good wrestler.”
Popp said that there was some talk of him and DeHart, Chesterton’s first two state champion wrestlers, putting on an exhibition against each other for the Chesterton Wrestling Club. Then they scotched the idea because they couldn’t trust themselves not to get carried away and wrestle to win, not a good idea at their ages.
“We all had wrestling mats at our houses back then,” Popp remembered. “John’s was in his basement and one time he threw me through a wall, so I kind of owe him one.”
Wrestlers.