University of North Carolina Athletics
Albert Rechenmacher (back right) is a constant presence in the UNC community.
GoHeels Exclusive: More Than a Wrestler
September 6, 2019 | Wrestling
By Joe Wedra, UNC Athletic Communications
Today, Albert Rechenmacher is in the Carolina wrestling room training for the start of the upcoming season.
This weekend, he'll be at UNC Hospitals delivering communion to patients who can't make it to Mass on Sunday. The next day, he'll spend a good chunk of his afternoon playing bridge with ladies, mostly in their 70s, trying to keep up with their fine-tuned, card-playing skills. Over the course of next week, he'll help with Mass at UNC's Newman Center, work on his biomedical engineering degree and continue to improve on his self-taught piano skills.
It's not the conventional life – it's just Albert Rechenmacher's.
More than an athlete
Albert embodies student-athlete perhaps as much as anyone on the University of North Carolina's campus. The senior has a 4.0 grade point average in the classroom and scored a 522 on the MCAT, which lands him in the 99th percentile.
He has applied to 15 medical schools and has received interview invitations from both UNC and Duke thus far.
His passion is in orthopedics. For Rechenmacher, his time at Carolina has been about more than conventional undergraduate activities. While he still enjoys his college experience, he knows that a degree from UNC is what will set him up to achieve his goals once he leaves Chapel Hill and his wrestling shoes behind.
"Coming into college, I wasn't sure between more of joint replacement, focusing on the elderly side of orthopedics, or focusing on sports," Rechenmacher said. "I'm now working as a hospice volunteer and starting to see the significance of the elderly being able to maintain mobility and how much that is relevant in them being able to still have their freedom. They feel like they aren't a burden, and to me that is really great. They feel like they have value and that they still matter to society. My biggest career goal is that if I can make one person be able to live in their house for six months, I will have succeeded as a doctor."
In terms of his time in the classroom, Rechenmacher has developed a style that is always a hot topic when his teammates in the room talk about his study habits. Simply put – he doesn't read.
Now, that's not to say the senior won't crack a textbook when he needs to, but his preference is away from traditional learning.
"I have sort of developed this style of learning where audio/visual for me, it has always been the most efficient form to memorize something," he said. "I like that because it allows me to go in and out of focus, where I can listen to what is being said, see what is being said, and at the same time I am processing and synthesizing the information. But if I'm reading and I stop to think for a little bit, now I'm no longer reading. If I am listening to a lecture, I can be able to multi-task that, where I'm still paying attention but I am taking that time to synthesize and ask the important 'what-if' questions and take that material a step further."
Wrestling's teaching moments
If you ask Rechenmacher - whose course load would be looked upon as one of the toughest on the UNC wrestling roster - what the most challenging part of his day is, he'd probably tell you wrestling practice. And it's because of that difficulty that he credits much of his academic success to the sport.
For the hopeful future surgeon, wrestling is what grows every other skill he's been able to cultivate throughout his time in Chapel Hill.
"I learn the same skills of being able to focus through a long practice and being able to overcome adversity," Rechenmacher said. "It's even just the little things like where I see friends who, if they have two exams on the same day and also their laptop happens to break that night, they sort of crack and crumble. Once life starts hitting back and things get hard, so many people don't have the ability to be able to fight back and push back against the adversities of life.
"Wrestling has made it so that I look forward to those challenges. I enjoy looking at and overcoming those obstacles. I think that if it wasn't for wrestling, I wouldn't have this mindset… There's no other activity in my life that has given me that mindset other than wrestling. I've found that it helps so much with success in the real world."
Helping the "least of these"
A very involved member of UNC's Newman Catholic Student Center, Rechenmacher places his faith at the forefront of his daily walk. He is the treasurer of the student center, serves as the student minister for liturgy at the church and teaches Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults classes.
His involvement at Newman has been crucial in his own faith journey, but he sees the impact it can have on others as the most valuable part of his time in the community.
Being a humble servant is his goal, something that he is able to achieve with skills honed in the wrestling room and around his church community.
"I always have my faith as the driving force for my decisions," he said. "Being able to look at my future career goals, I always want them to be reflective of my faith. I look at my favorite Gospel passage...I have definitely felt that the least of these in our society, I just want to serve these people."
Moving forward, Rechenmacher simply wants to serve and make a change in the world. And he feels as though his time at Carolina has made those two goals achievable.
Whether he's perfecting his single-leg defense in the afternoon or learning more about how to work with real-time blood flow measurements to advance the medical field, you can always find Albert Rechenmacher with a new goal for each day.
Today, Albert Rechenmacher is in the Carolina wrestling room training for the start of the upcoming season.
This weekend, he'll be at UNC Hospitals delivering communion to patients who can't make it to Mass on Sunday. The next day, he'll spend a good chunk of his afternoon playing bridge with ladies, mostly in their 70s, trying to keep up with their fine-tuned, card-playing skills. Over the course of next week, he'll help with Mass at UNC's Newman Center, work on his biomedical engineering degree and continue to improve on his self-taught piano skills.
It's not the conventional life – it's just Albert Rechenmacher's.
More than an athlete
Albert embodies student-athlete perhaps as much as anyone on the University of North Carolina's campus. The senior has a 4.0 grade point average in the classroom and scored a 522 on the MCAT, which lands him in the 99th percentile.
He has applied to 15 medical schools and has received interview invitations from both UNC and Duke thus far.
His passion is in orthopedics. For Rechenmacher, his time at Carolina has been about more than conventional undergraduate activities. While he still enjoys his college experience, he knows that a degree from UNC is what will set him up to achieve his goals once he leaves Chapel Hill and his wrestling shoes behind.
"Coming into college, I wasn't sure between more of joint replacement, focusing on the elderly side of orthopedics, or focusing on sports," Rechenmacher said. "I'm now working as a hospice volunteer and starting to see the significance of the elderly being able to maintain mobility and how much that is relevant in them being able to still have their freedom. They feel like they aren't a burden, and to me that is really great. They feel like they have value and that they still matter to society. My biggest career goal is that if I can make one person be able to live in their house for six months, I will have succeeded as a doctor."
In terms of his time in the classroom, Rechenmacher has developed a style that is always a hot topic when his teammates in the room talk about his study habits. Simply put – he doesn't read.
Now, that's not to say the senior won't crack a textbook when he needs to, but his preference is away from traditional learning.
"I have sort of developed this style of learning where audio/visual for me, it has always been the most efficient form to memorize something," he said. "I like that because it allows me to go in and out of focus, where I can listen to what is being said, see what is being said, and at the same time I am processing and synthesizing the information. But if I'm reading and I stop to think for a little bit, now I'm no longer reading. If I am listening to a lecture, I can be able to multi-task that, where I'm still paying attention but I am taking that time to synthesize and ask the important 'what-if' questions and take that material a step further."
Wrestling's teaching moments
If you ask Rechenmacher - whose course load would be looked upon as one of the toughest on the UNC wrestling roster - what the most challenging part of his day is, he'd probably tell you wrestling practice. And it's because of that difficulty that he credits much of his academic success to the sport.
For the hopeful future surgeon, wrestling is what grows every other skill he's been able to cultivate throughout his time in Chapel Hill.
"I learn the same skills of being able to focus through a long practice and being able to overcome adversity," Rechenmacher said. "It's even just the little things like where I see friends who, if they have two exams on the same day and also their laptop happens to break that night, they sort of crack and crumble. Once life starts hitting back and things get hard, so many people don't have the ability to be able to fight back and push back against the adversities of life.
"Wrestling has made it so that I look forward to those challenges. I enjoy looking at and overcoming those obstacles. I think that if it wasn't for wrestling, I wouldn't have this mindset… There's no other activity in my life that has given me that mindset other than wrestling. I've found that it helps so much with success in the real world."
Helping the "least of these"
A very involved member of UNC's Newman Catholic Student Center, Rechenmacher places his faith at the forefront of his daily walk. He is the treasurer of the student center, serves as the student minister for liturgy at the church and teaches Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults classes.
His involvement at Newman has been crucial in his own faith journey, but he sees the impact it can have on others as the most valuable part of his time in the community.
Being a humble servant is his goal, something that he is able to achieve with skills honed in the wrestling room and around his church community.
"I always have my faith as the driving force for my decisions," he said. "Being able to look at my future career goals, I always want them to be reflective of my faith. I look at my favorite Gospel passage...I have definitely felt that the least of these in our society, I just want to serve these people."
Moving forward, Rechenmacher simply wants to serve and make a change in the world. And he feels as though his time at Carolina has made those two goals achievable.
Whether he's perfecting his single-leg defense in the afternoon or learning more about how to work with real-time blood flow measurements to advance the medical field, you can always find Albert Rechenmacher with a new goal for each day.
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