How co-hosting an award-winning podcast is helping Bellefonte wrestler Jude Swisher grow on and off the mat

By Lauren Muthler

Updated May 13, 2020 7:47 PM

When it was announced on April 30 that Jude Swisher and Sam Herring, the teenagers behind the wrestling podcast and media website Home Mat Advantage, had won WIN Magazine’s Journalists of the Year Award, their social media accounts were flooded with congratulations and praise.

From the personalities at FloWrestling to Big Ten Network broadcaster Shane Sparks and current and former collegiate wrestlers like Willie Miklus and Austin Gomez, they received support from across the wrestling world, as they also gained several hundred new followers.

“It means a lot to have so many people come out and say congratulations,” Swisher, a sophomore wrestler for Bellefonte, said. “The interesting thing is you kind of get into a rhythm and you keep producing content, and sometimes you feel like maybe no one’s even listening, maybe no one even cares. But when we won, it was like all this wasn’t for nothing. People really do care about Home Mat Advantage and about Sam and I in particular. It makes you feel really good to know that the things you are doing are paying off.”

What started out a little more than a year ago as an idea cooked up over Twitter between two home-schooled teenagers 900 miles away from each other, 16-year-old Swisher in Benner Township and 13-year-old Sam in Memphis, Tennessee, who had never met in person, has quickly become a national award-winning podcast that has earned respect from high-level wrestlers, coaches and other wrestling media.

One of those people is longtime wrestling photographer Tony Rotundo.

“I think other adults look at them initially as kids, like isn’t this cute that these kids are doing this podcast,” Rotundo, who lives in San Francisco, said. “But pretty quickly on, I’m sure everyone is like, well this kid is asking hard questions and thoughtful questions and communicating well and not stammering over their words.”

Rotundo was so impressed with what Swisher and Sam were doing that just four podcasts in, he decided he wanted to do more to help these two young wrestling fans than just sending them a thumbs up on social media.

So he contacted their parents and then took the pair under his wing, helping them set up a website and teaching them the importance of promoting their content on social media. He encouraged them to bring on former two-time All-American Lehigh wrestler Mason Beckman to write articles, and is helping them learn about management styles and how to run a small business.

“If you spend any time with either or both of them, you’ll quickly realize that they are very smart and driven for their age,” Rotundo said. “I didn’t really prepare myself to say, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m going to go mentor some kids,’ but it happened really organically. When I heard their first couple podcasts, I thought these kids are really bright and very passionate. They’re not your average teenagers in terms of their ability to articulate their thoughts and their passion for the sport.”

As Home Mat Advantage has grown over the past year, so has Swisher, both personally and professionally. When he first started out interviewing wrestlers with the low-quality mic he bought with his birthday money, Swisher said he would get so nervous he would sweat and bounce his knee. The bouncing would get so bad that he’d shake the table he was recording on, and it was audible on the podcast, he said.

But now, he said, it’s the wrestlers on the other side of the mic who get a little bit nervous.

“We realize we’re not professionals right now, as much as we try to be. We don’t make money off of this. We just do it for a hobby. We’re not doing it for internet fame or anything like that,” he said. “And because of that, it allows us to relax a lot more while we interview.”

It also helps, Swisher said, that all the wrestlers either he or Sam have interviewed, including Olympic champions Jordan Burroughs and Kyle Snyder and World champion David Taylor, have been easy to talk to and supportive of them.

But that’s not surprising, because, as Swisher says, “It’s not fun to be a jerk to little kids.”

Getting that chance to talk to and pick the brains of some of the best college and senior-level wrestlers in the country has benefited Swisher in ways that extend beyond the mat or in the recording room.

Most importantly, Swisher said, interviewing these wrestlers has helped him establish his own sense of identity.

“Talking to all these high-level athletes who have all their own well-developed thoughts and ideas has really helped me realize what my own thoughts and ideas are,” he said. “It’s helped mold me into the type of person and wrestler that I want to be.”

Among those lessons learned, Swisher said, is the value of hard work, which he put to the test over the summer.

After going 0-2 at PIAAs as a freshman wrestling for State College last year, he spent all summer training, practicing 12 times a week for 12 weeks at the M2 Training Center in Pleasant Gap and the Nittany Lion Wrestling Club Regional Training Center. His family moved to the Bellefonte Area School District midway through the school year, and Swisher started wrestling for Bellefonte, where he won a District 6 Class 3A title, a Northwest Regional team and individual title, and left Hershey with a medal around his neck, placing fourth at 126 pounds.

With a national award-winning podcast already under his belt before his junior year of high school, the future is wide open for Swisher. But, careful not to think too far ahead, Swisher is just focusing on the goal he has right before him — to become a PIAA champ. Not only does Swisher want to become a state champ, he wants to win twice, then wrestle at the college level.

But for now, he just wants to keep wrestling, and keep telling the stories of other wrestlers.

“What I hope to do with Home Mat Advantage, at least with the interviews, is to help other people have an idea of who these competitors are and hopefully bring more attention to the sport of wrestling in general,” he said.