Wrestling on Family Feud
Esther, Joye, Heidi, Grace & Derek Levendusky on Family Feud in 2021. The Levenduskys were on Family Feud for two shows in November.
by Derek Levendusky
@AWWderek
It was a hot July summer night in Rhode Island in 2020. My family had rented a vacation house in Narragansett just a few blocks from the beach. They were all there—my wife Heidi Jo, my young adult daughters Grace and Joye, along with Esther, Reese, Audrey, and little Jack. Even Joye’s college roommate, Grace Kristoff, another McKendree wrestler, was there. So as not to confuse her with my daughter Grace, I nicknamed her “GK” that week (and it’s kinda stuck, at least with me).
Joye was home from her wrestling ventures at McKendree, where they’d just won a national title at the inaugural National Collegiate Women’s Wrestling Championships in Adrian, Michigan. The pandemic quarantine was in full mode, and we decided to go on vacation to get away from the isolation of western New York.
The cable TV on site was, well, limited. Let’s just say it was lots of the Game Show Network anytime we were back at the rental—The Chase, Divided, America Says, and yes of course, Family Feud. I remember watching Family Feud when I was a kid in the Richard Dawson days. It’s one of those shows that always seems to entertain, and now even more so with comedian Steve Harvey at the helm.
Our journey began in one whimsical, trivial moment. “Hey,” said Essie, lying on the couch, probably eating chips, “why can’t we be on Family Feud? What would it take for us to be on the show?” (Esther is now on the roster with her big sister at McKendree University.)
“I dunno,” I answered, reaching for my cell phone. I searched for the answer and eventually found the info. Covid is limiting in-person auditions…they’re taking video submissions…they film in studios in LA and Atlanta…
“Looks like all we’d have to do is film a video of us and I can submit it online tonight,” I told everyone. “Let’s do it!”
We all got up and gathered in the kitchen, came up with a simple plan to introduce ourselves, goof around and sing a song, and GK did the filming.
How’s that look? “It’s good!” they said. I submitted the video. And we forgot about it.
Months later, I received an email from a Family Feud producer that said, “Hey, we liked your video and would like to do a Zoom audition with your family!”
It was on. We had to coordinate a time with the rest of our family, now scattered around the country, dress like we were on the show, and play the game over Zoom with a producer named Avery. We all had to explain a little about ourselves, and it became pretty obvious pretty quickly that our family was deeply involved in the wrestling community.
As an aside, five of my six kids wrestle. We even got my oldest daughter Grace on the mat once—one of the most hilarious moments in our family history as she tried to launch a national team wrestler from New Jersey seconds after the whistle blew. Grace retired after that match, finding her way into the budding music career she has now (see @GraceSerene_andthe_SuperClean on Instagram).
Avery seemed intrigued by the wrestling part of our story, especially since it was women. Joye was already qualified to wrestle in Olympic Team Trials a few months later and at the time Essie was ranked #23 in the country in USAW National Rankings.
Everything seemed to go really well in the audition. We were over-the-top enthusiastic and played the game pretty well. Our game question was, “What does a pirate take off before he goes to bed?” We got most of the answers. (What would you say?)
A month later, we received another email. They wanted us to come to Atlanta for a final audition! They explained that we would play the game against another family in-studio with a warm-up host (Ruben) and if they liked us, they’d put us on the show. All-expense paid trip to Atlanta for my family? Heck yes.
We prepared to go in May of this year. It would be during Joye’s 21st birthday and my wife’s and my 27th anniversary. Not long after Women’s Nationals, Joye came home to New York and we were soon on our way to Atlanta.
One of the producers, Bryce, and I were going back and forth over email about some details and he mentioned that he was interested in the idea of Joye and me doing a quick wrestling demo on stage in the audition. I talked it over with Joye, but the more we discussed it, the more we realized a demo might not work. She was in a dress, I was in a tie, the floor was hard, and what move could you do that would actually be safe, and look cool given those conditions? The last thing we needed was a 911 call during a taping, or worse, throwing me into Steve Harvey and creating a viral video for all the wrong reasons. Joye especially was not into the idea.
I contacted Bryce and told him the wrestling demo wasn’t going to work. I mentioned to him that maybe we could sing something instead (we’re also a musical family, but that’s another story!). He responded, “Oh darn...we were excited for some sort of wrestling move but I understand.”
I told Joye about this and we were like, “Aw heck, let’s just try something! If they want it, we should probably do it.” So there we were out in the hotel halls, practicing different moves that might work on stage. At first, it was arm spins. I hit the floor over and over as hotel guests came walking by this spectacle of a muscular young woman launching her dad on the ornate carpet as they exited the elevators.
Nah, we decided, an arm spin won’t work in a dress.
We settled on a funky takedown from the 2-on-1 (yes, the “Russian 2-on-1” but don’t say that around Mike Mal who doesn’t want to give credit to the Russians). She had me pressure in, the trigger for the move…she’d mule kick the near leg into the air and land her foot just past my far foot, then she’d ankle pick the far foot, elevate, and I would land squarely—and safely—on my buttocks. Follow all that? If not, don’t worry about it. Let’s just say when done right it looks pretty cool.
The morning of the final audition arrived. They sent Family Feud labeled vans to pick us up and take us to the studio, just outside the city in the suburbs of Atlanta. We were actually right across the street from where they film a lot of Marvel movie scenes.
It was a very exciting day. They gathered the auditioning families in the makeshift cafeteria and told us we were the select few of 18,000 families that had tried out for the show. We had our own bathrooms, the trailer variety, labeled with our names on the doors. We felt like rock stars, seeing we had our own personal toilets. I’ll spare you all the details of the day, except to say that the first time we walked into the studio, music blaring, it was both surreal and stunning. Before long, we found ourselves on stage with Ruben, the warm-up host.
When he asked us to introduce ourselves, it was time for the move. “Hey, you want to see a wrestling move?” I asked.
“On ME?” he asked nervously. “No!” We laughed it off. “On me.”
“Let’s see it!” he said.
Joye and I stepped out onto the Family Feud floor. Moments later I was on my butt in front of the whole studio audience. They cheered wildly. Ruben laughed.
In the end, though they thought it was, to borrow a phrase from Wayne Fish, a sweet move, we all decided against trying it on the actual show. But I did advocate for women’s wrestling when Steve Harvey asked me to introduce my family during the taping. “I’m a wrestling coach,” I told him. “And I had no idea that I’d have three of my four daughters (two of them here today) who would fall in love with the sport of wrestling. And now I have three daughters who are some of the top wrestlers in the country in the fastest growing sport in America—women’s wrestling.”
The crowd cheered and Steve Harvey, grinning ear to ear with that million dollar smile, said, “That’s pretty good, man!”
We did end up singing songs on both shows we were on, including the song Amazing Grace. Steve seemed particularly moved by that performance as his faith is important to him, just as ours is to us. That said, each show takes about an hour and fifteen minutes to record, and they cut it down to 30 minutes, including commercials. Our performances didn’t make the final cuts, but Steve and the studio audiences all seemed to enjoy them and the whole thing was an amazing experience for my family.
We interacted with Steve for a few days as we were in the audience whenever we weren’t on the show—a limited audience due to Covid restrictions. He would often come out to the front and talk to us during breaks. Of course, he’s a riot (if you were wondering, it gets Rated R in commercial breaks) and super friendly. Even so, it was still surreal when we were actually on the show and he came walking out to the music. When it was all over, everyone, including Steve, was pretty exhausted after three long days in the studio.
If you didn’t see it or hear about it, we lost both games we played! They brought us back for a second game just because they said they enjoyed our family on the show and wanted to give us another chance, which we were very grateful for. Of course we were disappointed that we didn’t win either show, as we wanted the opportunity to play “Fast Money”—Grace and Joye were going to do it—but we were so thankful for the whole experience. The producers did tell us they might bring us back again for another show as they sometimes have some kind of “Lovable Losers” series.
The game is actually a lot harder to play live in-studio than it is watching it on TV. When you watch it on your television, everything is right there in front of you—the board, the strikes, clear audio—but it’s not like that in the studio. You have to be looking around and paying attention, without monitors, to what is happening because it’s easy to miss things.
We had lots of family and friends, in and out of the wrestling community, watch it and reach out to us to tell us how much they enjoyed it. We were thankful to represent our family, our faith, western New York—though we have since moved to Tennessee—and women’s wrestling.