Nothing in baseball can match an ace pitcher, not even the weight of history.
Poor Nancy Lefever.
Apparently the mother of three wrestling brothers, including senior twins Reece and Conner Lefever, is part nurturer and part demolition expert.
“There’s always manly things going on at our house,” Conner Lefever said. “Sometimes I feel sorry for my mom since she’s the only girl in the house, besides the cats. We are constantly getting in little wrestling matches with each other. We have put so many holes in the walls that my mom isn’t going to fix them anymore until we are all out of the house.”
On the mat, the Lefevers are cleaning up. The twins are both 28-0 for Carroll entering the postseason, Conner at 160 pounds and Reece at 152. Sophomore brother Riley is 23-10 at 140.
“There are lots of advantages as a wrestler having a twin brother,” said Conner, whose father, Kent Lefever, was a semistate qualifier while wrestling at Columbia City. “We are always pushing each other at practice. Neither of us wants to lose to the other, sometimes our coaches have to split us up at practice when Reece and I get in a fight. After practice we go home and watch college wrestling on TV or the Internet and if we see something that looks cool we will drill the move at home and at practice.”
So there are two constants in the lives of Conner and Reece Lefever: wrestling and being twins.
“Conner and I like to play tricks on our aunts and grandma to see if they can tell us apart or not,” Reece said. “My aunts usually can tell us apart, but my one of my grandmas sometimes can’t. The only way she can tell us apart is because I have a scar on my right leg because I had surgery due to breaking my leg. I also have a birthmark below my belly button. My grandma usually asks me to show her my leg to tell us apart.
“Conner and I are very competitive at everything we do. No matter what it is, we always want to beat each other. I definitely think Conner and I being competitive makes us a lot better. We always push each other during practice, and we do not let each slack off, because if one of slacks off, the other one of us will beat them up during practice.”
Conner is two minutes older but other than that most things are equal, including plans to wrestle in college together at Indiana Tech.
“I guess Conner and I are a lot like the ‘Twins’ movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito,” Reece said, jokingly. “I’m the one who got all of the good looks and brains, and Conner was left with nothing.
“I really don’t know what it’s like not to be a twin. When we were young, I thought my name was ‘ConnerReece.’ Coaches and teachers used to have to look at our shoes to tell us apart. At home when mom calls us by the wrong name, we just ignore her – which really annoys her.”
Yep, poor Mrs. Lefever.
