By Mike Pearson
FightingIllini.com
Over the years, the Fighting Illini wrestling program has featured some incredibly successful brother acts. From the Sapora brothers in the 1920s and '30s to the Tirapelle trio in the 1990s and 2000s, sibling DNA has led to exemplary leadership and exceptional results.
The current era of Illini wrestling features a pair of feisty identical twins from southern Illinois: Danny and Zac Braunagel. Early in the Fall of 2019, little more than a month after their 19th birthday, UI head coach Jim Heffernan confidently bestowed the title of co-captains to his then redshirt freshman phenoms.
"So much of wrestling and being successful in wrestling is about living a certain lifestyle," Heffernan said. "There's a lot of things that go into it. Tons of discipline … diet … obviously, work habits … dedication. Danny and Zac came in and impressed me so much. Their work ethic and the example they set made it a pretty easy choice.
"And I did it for a couple of other reasons, too. This is what we're looking for. To be a high caliber team, you need everybody moving in the same direction. So, No. 1, Danny and Zac earned it. That's what we need. If we're going to be challenging at the highest level, nationally, we need this attitude in our room. We need this desire and work ethic and will to win in our room."
"I've been around a lot of very good wrestlers," Heffernan continued. "Adam Tirapelle was maybe the best leader we've ever had as an athlete coming in. Alex Tirapelle was a great leader. Emory Parker was a good leader as he grew into the role. Isaiah Martinez was another one and naming him a captain is probably something we could have as a freshman. For Danny and Zac, I think it was a good chance for them to kind of exhibit their leadership and work habits."
Needless to say, the Braunagel boys were surprised at their coach's decision to name them co-captains.
"When it happened, I was like 'Oh, wow, that's awesome,'" Zac said. "It hasn't really changed my thought process at all because I already thought of myself as a leader on the team. In little league sports or in high school, I've always thought of myself as a leader. I've always tried to inspire others on the team. Being named a captain was a big confidence boost for me, for sure."
Danny indicated that he'd gotten a hint of Heffernan's plans while the twins were competing at the 2019 Pan-Am Junior Championships in Guatemala.
"Heff went on that trip with us," Danny said. "He mentioned it to us a little bit on that trip. When we got back to training again with the team, Heff just sat everybody down after practice and mentioned to the team that he wanted Zac and me to be captains. I was expecting we would be as seniors, so I was kind of surprised. Once he did that, it almost felt like a responsibility to be more of a leader than I already was trying to be. I'm big on leading by example. My training and focus and mentality have really stepped up, even outside of the wrestling room. I decided that I had to live like a captain. I started reaching out to guys more, voicing my opinion more, and stepping it up in the practice room."
Zac and Danny, products of Belleville's Althoff High School, are now redshirt sophomores for Heffernan, helping lead the Illini to a perfect 3-0 start in 2021. Thus far, Illinois has recorded victories over Indiana (39-3), eighth-ranked Ohio State (18-15) and No. 22 Wisconsin (21-9).
While successful in terms of individual records (23-9 for Danny and 21-10 for Zac), the Braunagels regarded their freshman season in 2019-20 as largely unfulfilling, especially when the season came to a screeching halt in mid-March as the COVID-19 pandemic invaded the United States.
"We were all crushed when that happened," Danny said. "As a team, we didn't have a good performance at the Big Tens, so we were excited to have the nationals to regroup. That day we were doing individual practices, so there were guys literally warming up for the practices when they were told to go home. Nobody knew how to react."
When they were sent home, the Braunagels took a week off to heal their tired and bruised bodies. Then Danny and his brother went right back to work.
"After about a month of running and lifting in our garage, we didn't have anywhere to go, so me and Zac and our younger brother Joe Joe just started wrestling in our backyard."
The Braunagels credit their dad, Joe Sr., for instilling their phenomenal work ethic.
"When we were little, our dad was learning about wrestling at the same time we were," Zac said. "He knew that you get out of it what you put into it. He always was looking up workouts for us, but he wasn't like a crazy dad at all. Around sixth or seventh grade, we told Dad that wrestling was huge for us. We'd had some success, so we wanted to continue to get better. From that point on, he's been like a trainer for us. He taken us to camps and tournaments so that we could get experience.
"We noticed how hard that he was working for us, so it drove us to work hard for him, too. He once asked a coach what we could do training-wise to get better, and the coach said that pull-ups were good. So, Dad installed a pull-up bar for us. Danny got one-and-a-half and I got maybe a half a pull-up. We worked on those every other day, then 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups on top of everything else we did the following day. By the time we had finished our seventh-grade season, Danny could do 52 pull-ups and I did 48."
The twins originally imagined themselves to be budding football stars, but then they were bitten by the wrestling bug.
"Wrestling was really a way for us to stay in shape for football," Danny said. "Zac and I were five and our older brother (Jarrid) was seven. Me and Zac didn't really take to (wrestling) as quickly as Jarrid. We were these short, little, tubby kids, so wrestling was a little bit harder for us to learn. We were super immature about it. We didn't want to go through the drills. Then, during my eighth-grade season, I made it to the state finals but lost. I was super bummed out, but I quickly realized how much I loved the sport of wrestling because I had never gotten that upset when I lost in football. Shortly after that, we quit football and focused on wrestling."
Heffernan greatly admires Zac and Danny's loyalty to each other.
"They live together and train together and eat together and do everything else together," Heffernan said. "My assumption is that someday those two will buy houses across the street from each other."
Next Fall, there will be a third Braunagel in the Illini wrestling room: Joe Jr.
"Joe Joe really, really wanted to come to Illinois, but, throughout his recruitment, we kept telling him to enjoy the recruiting process," Danny said. "At the end of the day, we told him that he had to make the best decision for him. We told him maybe Illinois isn't that, maybe somewhere else is. Wisconsin, Indiana, Navy were really recruiting him hard, but we were really excited when he decided to choose Illinois."
Heffernan said that Joe Jr. will likely compete at 197 pounds.
"Being the youngest brother, Joe probably got beat up quite a bit," Heffernan said. "I told the twins that if Joe keeps getting bigger, at some point there's going to be some payback."
