WATCH: South River student with autism connects to world through wrestling

• Autistic 15-year-old Erik Janicki, affectionately known as “Coach Erik,” continues to broaden his horizons through wrestling.
• Janicki’s responsibilities include, but are not limited to, helping run practices and delivering inspirational speeches to the team before dual meets.
• Janicki's affinity for the sport began to peak three years ago when South River's Doug Ryan won a conference tournament title and finished one victory shy of qualifying for the state championships.

As the father of a child on the autism spectrum, Kurt Janicki understands the need to keep his son connected to the world, but he never dreamed the sport of wrestling would serve as a conduit.

“Erik has a tendency to drift away,” Janicki said of his son, who fell in love with the sport several years ago while watching former Greater Middlesex Conference Tournament champion Doug Ryan, a 2015 South River High School graduate, compete.

“If you let him, his world would close in on him. If you don’t keep him connected to the world around him, he would close in on himself in a heartbeat, and he would continue to do that.”

In his second year as the South River High School wrestling program’s team manager, 15-year-old freshman Erik Janicki, affectionately known inside the room as “Coach Erik,” continues to broaden his horizons through the sport.

“It means the world to him and it’s teaching him so many different things,” said South River head coach Bobby Young, a special-education teacher at the high school who embraced the idea of Erik being a part of the team. “His father just wants Erik to feel the sense of people wanting him around, being a part of something. I told him, ‘Erik’s not just going to be here to be here. He’s going to be a part of this team. He’ll be in the practice room, he’ll be on the bench. I’m going to give him every opportunity to grow, not just as a manager, but as a person.’ ”

Kurt Janicki recalls with emotion the moment Young asked his son — whom he said “has the social development of an individual several years younger” — to be a part of South River’s wrestling program.

Needing whistle and stopwatch

“The first thing coach said to me was (Erik) needs a whistle and a stopwatch,” Kurt Janicki recalled. “I said, ‘What do you mean? I thought he was just going to have a pen and a clipboard.’ He said, ‘No. He’s going to be a coach.’ I was stunned. I remember it like it was yesterday. Erik’s eyes got wide and in his own way he was absolutely thrilled. It was a very emotional time.”

Janicki’s responsibilities include, but are not limited to, helping Young run practices and delivering inspirational speeches to the team before dual meets.

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“I just feel that it’s a really good experience to just be with a team that is basically like a brotherhood,” Erik Janicki said. “I help them with more or less like mental support. I just try to guide them through when they feel down after a match, or they feel angry. I calm them down saying, ‘Hey, it’s going to be all right.’ I really thank Coach (Young) for this great opportunity. For the boys, those are a great group of people. It’s great to have an opportunity to be with those guys.”

The elder Janicki, a 1983 graduate of South River who reached the Middlesex County Wrestling Tournament final as a high school senior, and his wife, Rose, also a graduate of South River and a varsity athlete, said they understand the impact being a part of a team can have on their son.

“Because I experienced it as a young man, I knew the value of what it would mean to Erik," Kurt Janicki said. "The thing about wrestling — you know how personal and emotional it can be — and (Erik) watches the journey that each one of these young men takes. He connects with them, and he’s emotionally invested in it.”

Affinity for the sport

Erik’s affinity for the sport began to peak three years ago when Ryan, then a junior, won a conference tournament title and finished one victory shy of qualifying for the prestigious New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association Championships in Atlantic City. Ryan reacted emotionally to that Region V loss at the Hunterdon Central Field House, not because it ended his junior season, but because he felt he let down Janicki.

“I felt that probably the best thing I could do for him was pretty much bringing him to Atlantic City with us,” said Ryan, who is now a freshman at Albright College. “I just fell short and I (still) feel bad about it. I saw how much he loves the sport and everything. It really kind of pushed me.

"Junior year, I remember winning counties and he was happy for me. He was probably more happy for me than I was. That was a great feeling having him in the stands and I was just doing that for him, basically. At the end of the day, he was still there for me and he still came back and watched me wrestle (as a high school senior) and everything.”

Ryan returned to South River during a recent winter break and was pleased to see “Coach Erik” thriving in the wrestling room.

“It makes me feel really good,” Ryan said. “I was almost kind of worried about him because he’s a freshman this year and I was kind of worried that kids might pick on him or something. But when I was up at school a couple of weeks ago, he said that he’s having a great time, that he loves high school. He said everybody treats him well, and I think that has a lot to do with him being the manager for wrestling.”

Kurt Janicki said his son “was born seemingly a normal baby” and that Erik spoke his first word — “momma” — at 10 months old.

“We thought he was going to talk early,” Janicki said, “but that was his last word. For three years, we didn’t hear another word. Shortly after that, the world around him began to close in. You could just see he was losing touch with all the things that normal children connect with throughout their childhood. As (others grew), he was going in the opposite direction.”

Janicki said he and his wife believed Erik might have been deaf. They consulted with audiologists and speech therapists who determined their son’s hearing was fine but suggested Erik might be on the autism spectrum.

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With the help of the state’s early intervention services, Janicki said that Erik, who received an hour of speech therapy and an hour of teaching daily, showed “some cognitive progress” but still “had an inability to express what he knew.”

Mother, sister provide critical support

Erik's mother and older sister, Drianna, now 22, have provided critical support throughout Erik's life to help him achieve many important developmental milestones.

At 3, Erik was enrolled at The Academy Learning Center in Monroe, which offers a comprehensive program for students age 3 to 21 with autism or multiple disabilities.

“They made a lot of progress in the three years he was there,” Janicki said. “We knew he was developing from a cognitive standpoint, but we wanted him to be in an environment that helped him with his social skills more, and we knew we were going to have to mainstream him.”

Erik enrolled in South River Public Schools at 6. Janicki said that with the help of a teacher’s aide, Erik continues to grow academically, and through the acceptance of understanding classmates, Erik continues to make strides socially.

“Academically, he’s done well,” Janicki said. “I think a lot of people have the preconceived notion that (children with autism) can’t compete academically. One of the things he has a problem with is when a teacher explains something to him verbally, it doesn’t completely connect. He needs continual reinforcement of those concepts because of his developmental disability, and so he continues to have an aide with him to help facilitate that.

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"The bigger problem with Erik is understanding the social aspects of school and community. It took him a long time to realize he couldn’t just speak out in class without raising his hand. A lot of (people) may have thought he was being rude.”

'Be the best'

During a quad meet at New Brunswick High School on Saturday, Erik joined Young, as he always does, for the opening coin toss before taking his usual spot on the bench next to the head coach. As Young shouted encouragement to his wrestlers, Janicki parroted those words, cupping his hands around his lips to form a makeshift megaphone. Wearing a maroon South River T-shirt with the words "BE THE BEST" emblazoned across the back in gray letters, Erik was fulfilling the team's motto while working hard to secure his second varsity letter, which he will receive at season's end.

“In his own mind, he sees these guys as heroes and warriors, almost on a mythical level,” Janicki said of Erik’s perception of high school wrestlers. “They are warriors of discipline. In his own private time, he’s drawing pictures of his favorite wrestlers. It even gets to the point where sometimes he makes up stories about each one of them. That’s part of the imaginative side of autism that I don’t ever want him to stop connecting with.”

Janicki said the innocence with which Erik approaches life reminds him daily that he is “privileged” to raise a child on the autism spectrum.

“Whatever symptoms or idiosyncrasies they show, you still have to nurture them every day,” Janicki said. “There is a purity to these children that the world desperately needs, and you don’t want to take that away. At the same time, you have to create a balance where they can function in this world.”

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the identified prevalence of autism spectrum disorders nationally has increased from 1 in 110 to 1 in 68 over the past decade. One in 45 children in New Jersey — 62 percent of whom are boys — are on the autism spectrum.

Hope to thrive into adulthood

Autism is a lifelong neurological disorder that impairs a person's ability to communicate and relate to others. It's broad spectrum of characteristics range from severe detached and isolated behavior to extreme verbal and hypersensitive behavior.

Janicki said Erik’s involvement with the wrestling program gives his family hope that their son will be able to thrive as he approaches adulthood.

“You see in a lot of cases these children being institutionalized as adults,” Janicki said. “Through the help of so many wonderful people, too numerous to name here, we are past that now. But the future still poses many challenges that leave Erik's future independence in question. We are trying like hell, and he really wants to be independent. He believes that, and he needs to remain connected to the world around him.”

For now, wrestling serves as that conduit, helping to close what Janicki once thought might have been an interminable divide.

“To the families of all these autistic children, they are wonderful gifts in your life,” Janicki said. “Don’t hide them from the world. Take time to let them teach you about yourself and about them.

"Connect them to this world, because if we were all a little bit more like them, this whole world would be a better place."

Staff Writer Greg Tufaro: gtufaro@gannettnj.com