Jan. 9, 2007: The Salt Lake Tribune

Brothers' Hard Work Gets Foes to Say Uncle
by Jay Drew

The brothers live in a bachelor pad of sorts with their 24-year-old uncle, Rusty, on a 200-acre farm owned by their grandparents in the hills south of Hyrum, Cache County. They are already two of Utah's best prep wrestlers, although Ethen is just a sophomore and Raider is a freshman.

Ethen, 15, is an All-American, having placed third at last summer's USA Wrestling National Finals in Fargo, N.D., after winning a 4-A state championship at 140 pounds as a freshman. He is also a 4.0 student and an honorable mention all-state linebacker, despite his size, and is 26-0 this season.

Raider, 14, is 28-2 and on track to win the 4-A title at 103 pounds in his first year of high school wrestling, a feat that would set him up to be a rare four-time state champion. Want tough? The 100-pounder played noseguard on Mountain Crest's freshman football team.

Both will compete tonight at the Utah All-Star Wrestling Classic, an annual event that pits high schoolers from all five classifications against each other at Utah Valley State College. Ethen will face Bear River's Brayden Peterson, a three-time state placer, and Raider will meet Pine View's Malcolm Maxwell.

The event begins at 7 p.m.

But while most, if not all, of the other 54 wrestlers tonight will have their fathers watching them, Raider and Ethen won't.

They say they don't even know their father's name, let alone where he's at or what he's doing.

"It's not something we talk a lot about," Ethen said. "Besides, we have a lot of fathers - our uncles."

Those uncles - Cody, Rusty and Luke - have pretty much raised their nephews along with Lyle and Julie Lofthouse, the boys' grandparents, since the family's oldest daughter, JoLee, gave birth to the boys in the early 1990s. JoLee and the boys' father split up shortly after Raider's birth.

Cody was the first to wrestle and started the winning tradition. Rusty is now an assistant coach for Mountain Crest, while the youngest, Luke, was the 2004 Salt Lake Tribune Athlete of the Year after winning three state wrestling titles and earning several all-state football accolades. MC's 2004 valedictorian cracked Iowa's lineup as a freshman, but is currently on an LDS Church mission in Zimbabwe.

JoLee is still a big part of the boys' lives and attends most of their matches, but Ethen, Raider and Rusty say it is a better situation for the boys to live in Avon in the basement apartment of Lyle and Julie Lofthouse's farmhouse, a 10-minute drive from the high school.

"We can coach them in wrestling and help them in school," Rusty said. "It works well, for a thousand different reasons, but it is just as much for us as it is for them. They help out a lot on the farm."

Therein lies the secret to the Lofthouses' amazing success, Mountain Crest coach Davie Swensen said.

"They work so, so hard," Swensen said. "They haul hay when it's blistering hot outside, and feed cows in a blizzard, then they're at the school at 7 every morning working out, even during the [holiday] break. . . . They make everybody around them feel good about them."

That is why the entire community mourned in 2005 when the boys' best friend, Mundo Villapuda, was killed in an automobile accident while returning to Hyrum from Idaho Falls, where he was helping with the family's catering business.

Ethen dedicated his 2006 state championship to Villapuda, and said, "from here on out, a lot of what I accomplish will be for him."

It is not all work at the Lofthouse digs, however. Competition rules the day, whether it is wrestling or video games or working out.

For instance, Rusty and Ethen have a bet going that says Rusty has to keep his beard until Ethen fails to win a match by fall or major decision (eight points).

Having coached Luke Lofthouse and another standout who starred for Oklahoma State, Swensen said Ethen and Raider "are just as good, maybe better" as any wrestlers he has had in 22 years at the 4-A school.

"You have to be careful saying that, because they are still young," he said. "But they won't stop working, I can tell you that much."

Because they've got all those fathers to please.