“He said, ‘If I’m sitting in the stands (at the NCAA Championships), watching my brothers, and we lose by 12 or 20 points in the team race and I know I could have made the difference, I couldn’t live with myself,’” Larry Lee says. “‘So I’m going to win an NCAA title and make the Olympic team. I’m going to do both.’
“His mind was made up.”
These comments unequivocally prove how important the team, and a team title is, to Lee.
Another previously untold story about Lee emphasizes that desire. After he won each of his first two 125-pound national titles at Iowa, he was eligible for a champion’s stipend — think of it as a bowl gift in football — with which he had the option of buying a national championship ring.
Both times, Lee declined.
“I said I want a team ring,” he said, “I don’t want an individual ring.
“Walking around at 65 or 70 years old, one of those old dudes wearing their own national champ rings, I feel like that’s tooting your horn and I don’t care about that.
“I want to celebrate with my teammates or my family. I’ll go jump in my mom and dad’s arms or what-not. But in the middle of the mat, I won’t do anything that is derogatory toward my opponent. It’s the same thing with my ring. I refuse to wear a national champ ring that is my own. I want a ring that my team has earned.”