Middleville, Michigan — When Mang Ling told friends he intended to wrestle, they immediately envisioned him slipping between the ropes, dusting off his sleeper hold and putting the hurt on Captain Charisma.Considering Ling’s history, that guess would be significantly closer to the truth than where Ling has wound up.

While his friends thought he meant he was signing on with World Wrestling Entertainment, the 18-year-old sophomore actually is on the Middleville wrestling team.

“I tell people that I wrestle and they freak out,” Ling said. “They’re like, ‘Whaaaat, the WWE?’”

You can’t blame Ling’s friends for their surprise. One of three refugees on Middleville’s team who hail from Burma, now called the Union of Myanmar, Ling has overcome the loss of both parents, worked as an electrician to support himself at 15, had a brush with one of the countless warring factions in Burma and survived a perilous boat trip to Thailand to land on his feet in West Michigan.

Trojan teammates Steven Cung Bik, who at 20-3 has the best record of any 145-pounder in the OK Gold Conference, and Van Thang, who has a 19-10 record as a 119-pounder, have similar stories as Ling, a 112-pounder who is called “Steve” by teammates.

All three were separated from their parents in Burma in their early teens and barely supported themselves through a variety of odd jobs before undertaking a dangerous journey to bordering Thailand and then to Malaysia, where they made contact with Bethany Christian Services. The agency helped settle them in Middleville.

The only time the three had watched wrestling before joining the Trojans varsity team was seeing the WWE on television.

Now, each of them has a chance to win a league title at Saturday’s conference meet at Catholic Central.

The trio’s unlikely story of fleeing a hard life in Burma to landing in an American high school is nothing short of amazing, said Middleville wrestling coach Tom Fletke, also a counselor at the school. The youngsters’ friends at Middleville encouraged them to try wrestling, Fletke showed them a film of Olympic wrestlers and their natural athletic ability quickly took its course.

Fletke said the trio has more than made up for a lack of wrestling technique with advantages in physical strength, plus incredible mental toughness and a willingness to learn.

“They had no clue about wrestling. They’re like cats — powerful. Their technique just isn’t that good, but they have this driving force to be better,” Fletke said.

Wanting a better life drove them from Burma, a poor country of 50 million people located in southeast Asia. Known to most of the world as Myanmar since 1989, Burma is split by ethnic tensions and has been ruled by the military since a 1962 coup. Life there, Thang said, is hard for everyone, let alone parent-less teens.

“There are no jobs which pay money,” Thang said. “It’s hard to feed yourself when you’re young and can’t do anything.

“You don’t choose your job. You do anything you can find.”

Ling was separated from his parents by the military, for which he eventually ran errands. The military also hunted Bik’s father, chasing him to India. In an attempt to get his father to return, the police threatened to jail Bik, whose first job at 12 was as an equipment packer.

Thang was a farmer and then a cook before he fled to neighboring Thailand.

The three teens, all of whom have physical scars from their life in Burma, tell the same harrowing tale of fleeing to Thailand. All were packed tightly into a boat and covered with a plastic tarp to avoid detection by authorities on the four-day trip to Thailand. There, they trekked through a pitch-black, snake-infested jungle for miles, with little food and in constant fear of being discovered and sent to jail by police.

“I was really scared. Sometimes, I would cry. I didn’t like the jungle,” Bik said. “When they say run, you run.”

Once in Thailand, the three made contact with Bethany Christian Services. Thang and Ling, who enrolled at Middleville in 2008, live with host family Scott and Lynn Pierce. Bik, now in his third year at Middleville, lives with the Chad and Joanna Seeber family.

Fletke said he is amazed at what the teens have accomplished on the mat with little wrestling experience. He said the primary driving force among the three is identical. All have become good wrestlers because their culture equates a loss with letting their teammates down. Driven by that fear, the three will go to great lengths to improve as wrestlers.

“You have to give 100 percent and do anything you have to do to win,” said Bik, who dresses up at other Middleville sporting events as the school mascot. “You keep fighting with everything you have. If that doesn’t work, I’ll practice more and not get down on myself.

“In our country, when you play a sport, you’re part of a team. You look at yourself as (needing to be) better than anyone else. But if you lose, you have to work harder.”