Louka Babic will wrestle at Case following unique high school career at Kirtland, Gilmour
Apr. 20—There aren't many high school student-athletes who have done what Louka Babic has done.
You'd be hard-pressed to find many — or any — student-athletes who are All-Ohio performers at two different schools in two different sports. But that's what Babic has accomplished as his senior year of high school winds down.
The son of Andrew and Jennifer Babic is a senior at Gilmour, where he was a third team Division III All-Ohioan in football this past fall with 6 1/2 sacks, 12 tackles for loss and nearly 100 stops on the gridiron.
This past winter, he became a state-qualifier for the Kirtland wrestling team, compiling a 35-6 record and eclipsing the 100-win total for his career with his hometown Hornets. Babic is allowed to wrestle for his home school since Gilmour does not have wrestling.
"It's been really interesting," Babic said. "I feel like I can't really understand (the rarity) because I don't know the other side. My whole life has been one sport at one school and another sport at another school. It's like two different spheres. But it's been great."
Babic is heading into the unknown next year, however. He'll be doing something he hasn't done in a long time.
Play one sport at one school.
Babic has signed to wrestle at Case Western Reserve University, where he plans to major in biomedical engineering. He chose Case over an opportunity to study and play football at Carnegie Mellon. He also considered Ohio State and Georgia Tech for academics.
"I'm so excited," Babic said. "I'm ready to jump in as soon as school is over to see what the next four years is going to be like.
"Obviously, Case is the best school that I got into (application-wise). Their coach is one of the nicest people I've ever met. He didn't want me to come there just for wrestling. He has my best interests at heart. I feel that is where I'll have the most success."
That he'll be wrestling at college is a relative surprise to him. He admitted that for a long time his first love was football. He said that midway through his junior year, "something clicked" and he realized that wrestling was going to be his college destiny.
The 5-foot-10, 180-pounder — who sports a 4.144 GPA and scored an impressive 1,450 composite on the SAT — is excited at the challenge of college wrestling at one of the premier academic institutions in the nation.
"It's been a long time since I played only one sport," he said with a laugh. "Maybe like third grade when I took a year off of wrestling. But when you factor in the academic work load, it's probably going to feel like two sports when I'm in college anyway."
Big brother of Roman and Xavier Babic, Louka said his high school memory chest is a full one, from a big win over NDCL in his senior year of football at Gilmour to wrestling at the state tournament for the Kirtland Hornets. The friendship bonds at both schools he said he will take with him for a lifetime.
