Adrian St. Germain trained his whole life to be a great wrestler. In 2019, the three-time high school state champion experienced the culmination of his 14 years of work when he started wrestling at Hofstra University. He redshirted in his first year, and in January 2020, he won his first collegiate match. Things were going well, and he was just starting the wrestling career he had always dreamed of. Less than a year later, though, that was all taken away, and St. Germain faced the hardest challenge of his life. Confronting a long recovery and an uncertain future, the lessons he learned from wrestling would help him exceed every expectation.

St. Germain arrived at Hofstra in the fall of 2019. He had committed only a few months earlier, having received offers from other schools, but none of them were as compelling.

“It just all fit together,” St. Germain said. “I was like, ‘Dude, this is home.’”

That first year was an adjustment. Having grown up in Washington state, he was now across the country, navigating his freshmen year away from everything he had known. But this experience taught him life lessons that would be crucial later in life.

“They taught me how to work hard,” St. Germain said, “I thought I could work hard because I had won state championships, but they proved me wrong.”

St. Germain’s unorthodox wrestling style and his infectious attitude caught the attention of Hofstra wrestling head coach Dennis Papadatos, who closely observed him during practices and at his one competition that season.

“He had flashes of looking very good, and other times, he looked young,” Papadatos said. “[Competition-wise], Washington is not the best state, so he was inexperienced at this level, but you saw that he had the ability to do it.”

Things were going according to plan for St. Germain. He had grown to love Hofstra and made many friends both on and off the wrestling team. He felt ready for the upcoming season. But, while back home in University Place, Washington, on Thanksgiving 2020, the life St. Germain had built for himself was forever changed when he overdosed on a combination of alcohol, Adderall, Percocet and cocaine while out with a group of friends.

Only 19 years old at the time, St. Germain spent the next 47 days in a coma at Harbor View hospital in Seattle, Washington, while his loved ones anxiously wondered if he’d ever wake up. While comatose, St. Germain frequently underwent dialysis and had to have a tracheostomy in order to insert both breathing and feeding tubes. Finally, on Jan. 12, 2021, St. Germain awoke without any memory of what happened.

“It was crazy because it was like waking up for the first time ever,” St. Germain said. “From what I pieced together we were being stupid. Just utterly stupid.”

At that point, St. Germain was fully dependent on the doctors to help him perform what were once the simplest of tasks.

“I couldn’t move when I first woke up,” St. Germain said. “That was the hardest part of anything. The doctors had to lift me out of the bed and into the wheelchair. It was really hard going from such a high level of wrestling and being athletic – going on miles and miles of running every day – and then boom, you can’t move.”

Back at Hofstra, the news of what had happened sent shockwaves through the wrestling team. Although he had used drugs and alcohol in high school, that side of St. Germain’s life was unknown to those he had developed relationships with while at college.

“To me, there were no signs,” Papadatos said. “It was completely out of left field.”

“I put it together pretty quickly what happened,” said St. Germain’s teammate and senior Justin Hoyle. “I didn’t want to say it out loud because I didn’t want to be right.”

Hoyle joined the team the same year as St. Germain, and they knew each other from competing in the same youth wrestling league while growing up in Washington. Like St. Germain had the year before, Hoyle and many members of the team stayed on Long Island for Thanksgiving.

Papadatos recounted the conversations that led to St. Germain going home. The year before, St. Germain had stayed on Long Island and spent the holiday having dinner at his coach’s house.

“He wasn’t going to go home,” Papadatos said, “I remember saying, ‘Dude, we don’t have practice; go home.’ I felt responsible. It was very hard on me because I felt like if he wasn’t there, this wouldn’t have happened.”

To say that the team was devastated would be an understatement. The connection formed between them is like a brotherhood, and their worry for St. Germain remains palpable today when they recount that time.

“We were all close with Adrian, and we knew just how much he meant to our culture,” said fifth-year senior Trey Rogers, who was at one point St. Germain’s suitemate.

“When we first heard about it, we just hoped he made it through. We weren’t thinking, ‘Man, we need a 149-pounder now.’ It was all about making sure he gets through this before we think of anything else.”

 The distance between St. Germain and the team was compounded due to the COVID-19 protocols that were in place. All the way across the country, the team couldn’t have been further away and all he wanted was to return to them. Through a Zoom meeting, the team got to see St. Germain after he woke up from the coma – the first time in months.

“I remember the first Zoom,” Rogers said. “We were in the office, and I saw him and that was the first time seeing him since he went home. I got pretty teary eyed. I had to walk out.”

For the first few months of St. Germain’s recovery, he had to relearn how to walk, grab things and drive all over again. His doctors had little optimism that he’d ever get back to where he once was physically, and they discussed getting him a “good wheelchair” for when he returned home.

“I was always like ‘When can I run again, when can I go wrestle with the team?’” St. Germain said. “They didn’t give me signs of hope in the hospital, and that was hard. The doctors would say, ‘That’s not happening.’ But I was like ‘Dude, it’s going to happen because I’m going to make it happen.’”

St. Germain refused to let the doubts of his doctors deter him. As strenuous as his recovery was, through countless hours of both physical and occupational therapy, his drive to get back on the mat kept pushing him forward.

“There were days that I’d feel tired, and I didn’t want to get up,
” St. Germain said. “But I’d just think about those days at Hofstra. I could hear Dennis’ voice in the back of my head saying, ‘Get up! Let’s work! Don’t stop grinding!’”

After months of hard work, St. Germain regained the ability to walk again. He passed his occupational therapy in 2022 after earning his driver’s license, and he still goes to physical therapy once a week.

“It was really inspiring watching him come back,” Rogers said.

“I walk with a limp, and I can kind of run now,” St. Germain said more than two years after his overdose. “I can get in the weight room. I love it, it’s my favorite place in the world.”

St. Germain is finding purpose in life again. He is navigating the world with a new outlook after being given a second chance. When asked if he ever thinks about what could have been, St. Germain said:

“All the time, but you can’t live in a reality that’s not reality. I imagine the things I’m going to do now with my story, and the impact I can make on other people’s lives now. As much as I hate that this happened to me, I’m glad that it happened to me instead of someone else, because I don’t think a lot of people would be able to get through it.”

Today, St. Germain is a psychology major at Tacoma Community College, and works at LA Fitness, which he says is his first real job. Still forever connected to wrestling, he coaches at his former high school.

“It’s awesome seeing kids and having an impact on their life,” St. Germain said. “I look at them and think about how I used to be like that. It’s fun; I love it.”

Although his days at Hofstra are now in the distant past, the team has not left St. Germain’s thoughts. He still talks to many of his former teammates and keeps up with how the season is going. Eventually, he plans to visit before many of his friends on the team graduate.

“He’s the best,” Rogers said, “I miss him for sure and would love for him to come back here again.”

Papadatos echoed that sentiment.

“If I saw him now, it’d be like I saw him yesterday,” he said.

Photo courtesy of Curtis High School Wrestling