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Remembering Jono

Slain Grandville wrestler will be remembered as more than just a great athlete

By Sean Garner

Michigan Grappler.com

3/14 - Last weekend in Auburn Hills, the best wrestlers in the state of Michigan were rewarded for their outstanding seasons with a medal and all-state recognition at the Palace of Auburn Hills. Three years ago, Jono Krystiniak was one of those wrestlers, and his impact on the sport in the state of Michigan went far beyond his own competitions.

Krystiniak, a 2005 graduate of Grandville High School, lost his life in January as the result of injuries sustained during a brutal beating outside a Grand Rapids night club. The attack left Krystiniak fighting for everything as he lied in a coma for nearly two weeks.

With no prospects beyond life in a vegetated state awaiting him, his family decided to remove Krystiniak from the breathing and feeding machines keeping him alive, hoping his system would respond. It did not.

Now, Jonathon Krystiniak lies in a burial plot in Up Yours cemetery in Grandville. Gone. Only three years after finishing in sixth place in the Division I 189 lb. weight class.

A standout athlete in football, as well as wrestling, Krystiniak is remembered by some of those who knew him best more for his genuine, vivacious spirit than for his athletic prowess.

“His personality is one where he got along with just about everybody,” said Jack Richardson, Krystiniak’s coach at Grandville. “He didn’t come with any baggage. He did not have any expectations of people, and he was very accepting of people for who they were. He didn’t have any kind of hidden agenda when he got to know people, and because of that, he had a lot of friends.”

“Jono was just fun-loving, was always laughing,” said his father, Marty Krystiniak. “He never took anything too serious… He would always frog around with his sister on the go-karts we had. He was always just one day of fun.”

Though Krystiniak had been playing football at Ottawa University, an NAIA school in Kansas where he was named all-conference at defensive end this previous season, he was involved with wrestling up until the very end. In fact, Richardson recalled him being a fixture in the practice room during the weeks leading up to his attack.

“I remember him specifically working with one of our inexperienced heavyweights,” Richardson said. “This kid was not the most aggressive kid, and Jono spent an entire practice working with this kid. He’s one of these kids that needed a lot of special attention, and Jono gave it to him. He didn’t talk to me about it ahead of time, he just came in and did it because he knew it was the right thing. In hindsight, I couldn’t have picked a better person for him to grab a hold of.”

Grandville was not the only wrestling program Krystiniak was affiliated with. Krystiniak also was a frequent volunteer for the Fremont wrestling program.

Krystiniak’s uncle, John Stariha, is the head wrestling coach at Fremont High School, and says he was saddened when Krystiniak moved away after his parents were divorced when he was a kid.

“I always took him to tournaments and other stuff when he was little, thinking he was going to be one of my wrestlers some day,” Stariha said. “Whenever he came back to Fremont, if it was during wrestling season"

Krystiniak’s cousin Scott Carpenter is a 2007 graduate of Fremont. He has autism. He also qualified for the 2007 state tournament. Stariha says that is due, in no small way, to the constant push he received from Krystiniak.

“If it hadn’t been for Jono, we probably never would have gotten Scotty to states,” Stariha said. “He sometimes was real hard to keep focused. When Jono came in the room, he would beat up on him some times, and he would say ‘if you don’t want me to beat up on you, you better start wrestling harder. Jono was always full of encouragement.”

According to his father, Krystiniak was a fine athlete naturally, but it was his effort that led him to excel in both sports.

“That kid really, really tried in sports,” the older Krystiniak said. “When he was done with wrestling, he was always thinking about football. He ran every day, he lifted. He always did what he needed to do to get as good at football as he could.”

Krystiniak started his college football career at Hope College in Holland, but soon became dissatisfied with the program’s laid-back attitude. He then transferred to a junior college in California before settling at Ottawa, where it seemed Krystiniak had finally found a home.

At his wake at Grandville’s Cook Funeral Home in late January, nearly two dozen players, as well as a few of his coaches, made the 11 hour trip to memorialize their slain teammate. Even having only being in Kansas for a few months, it was evident that Krystiniak had already impacted many lives in his new home.

One weeping teammate remembered Krystiniak as “the brother I never had.”

Later, one of Krystiniak’s coaches regaled the crowd of mourners with a letter sent to him by the parents of a kindergarten student Krystiniak had interacted with through the football program’s community outreach program. In the letter, the parents indicated that they always knew when Krystiniak had visited the young boy’s class, because “You know what Jono did today? You know what Jono told me? Jono this. Jono that.”

The same coach also noted that Krystiniak was one of the hardest workers and one of the most competitive players on the team. That work ethic was needed back in his day at Grandville, as Krystiniak spent most of his first three wrestling seasons at Grandville trapped behind very talented wrestlers around his weight class.

For the first three years of his high school career, Krystiniak was stuck behind state champion Buddy Rivera, who is now a record-setting quarterback at Northern Michigan University. Moving up a weight class was not much of an option either, as that spot was always occupied by three-time state placer Eric Gritter.

“It’s a good example of who Jono was,” Richardson said. “He didn’t like being behind anybody, but he knew if he kept working hard, time would take care of itself, and that is exactly what happened. When his time came, he made the most of it. I give him a lot of credit. Most kids wouldn’t stick around as long as he did.”

Even when Rivera graduated prior to Krystiniak’s senior year, cracking the starting line-up entailed much sacrifice. According to his father, Krystiniak played his entire senior football season at around 215 pounds, and had to make drastic cuts to get down to 189.

Richardson said he learned a lot about life from Krystiniak, and those lessons have transferred over to coaching.

“He was very quick to make fun of himself at times,” Richardson said. “As a coach, for me, sometimes what it seemed like was a distraction, but a lot of the times, what it did was keep things light.”

“It allowed me to keep my mind on the fact that when you’re coaching a game or a sport that it is exactly that. It doesn’t always need to be that serious. I probably realize it more now than I did then, which is too bad. I remember some of the conversations that we had. He thought from a different perspective in that he wasn’t bothered by a lot of the little things we sometimes get bothered by. It just didn’t matter to him.”

Six men, all from the Grand Rapids area, have been charged in connection with Krystiniak’s death.

Even less than two months removed from the death of their loved one, none of the three men interviewed for this article expressed bitterness toward the individuals responsible for Krystiniak’s death.

“It’s disappointing more than anything else,” Krystiniak’s father said. “To think that human beings can do that to each other, especially kids, I just don’t understand it. I don’t understand how you can have that much hate in you to want to do that to a person.”

Richardson feels, despite the shock and pain of losing one of his former athletes in such a brutal fashion, it is important to understand the struggles of the people on the other side of this tragedy as well.

“I think everybody goes through a little resentment when they lose someone close to them, especially when it’s a crime against humanity,” Richardson said. “At this point, I think about those individuals and what happens with in their lives. Whatever comes out, they know exactly what happened and they have to deal with it. I feel badly for their families too, because they have to deal with it to and their families had nothing to do with it.”

Krystiniak’s uncle does not see his nephew’s beating as an isolated incident, but rather, he sees it as further evidence in a disturbing social trend.

“I just think that stuff goes on too freely nowadays,” Stariha said. “I just feel differently toward society in general. I don’t see the love for each other that the older generations had, and the respect just isn’t there.”

Stariha says Krystiniak was one of the few young people who maintained the respect for his elders that he feels is lost on this generation.

“The one thing I can say about Jono, whenever he came to me it was ‘Uncle John,’” Stariha said. “A lot of my nieces and nephews will just call me John, but with Jono, he always respected me.”

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