America's Main Mat Men
New Jersy won its third team title Sunday at the National High School Coaches Association (NHSCA) championships at the Virginia Beach convention center. Photo by Jason Norman
Three years ago, a young man from Washington nearly walked out on his high school wrestling career.
Despondent over his failure to make the state tournament, Josh Heinzer nearly decided he was done with the mat games.
For some reason or other, he came back. That year, he won a state title. The next two years, he followed his own suit.
And on Sunday evening, about as far from home as he could get, Heinzer did something that few high school mat men ever do - he took on America's finest, and, in what may be the last match of his high school career, came out on top.
"I kept with it," said an emotional Heinzer after his win over Alex Gilpin (Texas) in the National High School Coaches Association (NHSCA) championships at the Virginia Beach convention center. "I always knew I had the tools to get there. It was just a lot of work to do. I knew that if I went out there and attacked his legs, I could win."
The Washington native handed Gilpin his first defeat of the season, charging away for a 13-6 victory in 112 competition. Unlike many of his tourney colleagues, Heinzer hasn't picked a college, and hoped the NHSCA win might grab him some exposure.
"I've been training, training, training all these last three weeks," he said. "I really want to wrestle in college, and I knew I had to excel at this event."
New Jersey took its third team victory in the event's 21-year history, as Chris Villalonga (140), Jordan Beverly (145), Billy George (189), and Jimmy Lawson (heavyweight) won their respective divisions to come out ahead of New York, 233.5-190.
Max Soria, who watched his twin brother Mike take a New York title two seasons ago, and fell short in his own last shot for a state championship last year, started things at 103 with a win over Joe Barnes of Missouri. With Soria leading 7-0 in the third period, Barnes escaped, then scored a takedown with less than 10 seconds to go, but Soria held on for a 7-3 win.
"(Mike and I) have been talking about how this year should have been mine," said Soria (Mike got fourth in the weekend event). "That's why I had to come back and win this."
With less than a minute to go in the 130 match, Illinois champ Keith Surber did a back flip past Levi Wolfensperger (Iowa), who had him by the leg. Wolfensperger grabbed Surber and tried to get behind him, but Surber got out from under him and pressed his back against Wolfensperger's chest for a near-pin and 5-2 lead.
The wrestlers fell out of bounds, and Wolfensperger escaped a clinch with eight seconds left, but Surber held him off for the win.
"Winning states in great," said Surber, who'd soon be named the meet's most outstanding wrestler, "but there's another 49 states' worth of kids out there that I want to compete against to see where I'm at. If I can't beat them all, I want to see how I can get to the next level."
Beverly charged out to a 7-0 first-period lead over Grant Sullivan (Alaska), then kept things going all the way to a 13-3 victory.
"To never win a state title, and then to come here and win this, it's remarkable," said Beverly, who took second in Jersey his junior year and will head to Rutgers this fall. "I was never completely in danger for the entire match."
Some of the matsters used the event as something of a preview; three-time Indiana champ Ryan Nieman, who took the 135 title, enrolls at Virginia Tech this fall, while Ohio champion Nick Sulzer, the 160 winner, heads to the University of Virginia.
"I got a little taste of Virginia wrestling," Sulzer said, "but I don't think you should ever be satisfied until you get to college and win a title. When I get to college, I'm going to get my butt whooped, so I have to be ready for that."
At 171, New York's Tyler Beckwith became the first wrestler in tournament history to take home event titles in all four years of high school. After nearly pinning Isaiah Williams (Mass.) in the early going (all of Sunday evening's matches went the distance), he took a 4-2 lead.
Beckwith stretched his lead to 6-2 near the end of the second period, but injured his leg, and Williams escaped to get to 6-3. But he couldn't maneuver another takedown, and Beckwith snared a standing ovation.
"I love the big atmosphere and the sound of the mat," said Beckwith, who brought Greene High a pair of state titles. "I wasn't going to lose my final match. It was a great feeling."
Heavyweights aren't especially known for their quickness, but when the nation's finest are at work, it's expected that a rule will make exceptions. After Lance Moore (New York) took him down in the early moments of the largest match - in the literal sense - Lawson spun and launched Moore to the ground for his own two-point score with 30 seconds left in the period. In the second, Moore grabbed his leg, but Lawson escaped again and landed on Moore's back for a 4-2 lead.
Lawson escaped early in the third period, and the earlier process repeated: Moore lunged, Lawson spun, and ended up upping his lead to 7-2. Moore could only manage a single escape in the closing moments.
"If (your opponent) gets a takedown, you have to clock it out, because the match is still early," said Lawson, a three-time state champ (though he may give up wrestling for the football scholarship that got him into Jersey's Monmouth University). "I didn't really have anything to worry about. I think they can consider me as one of the top wrestlers. Hard work pays off, and that definitely showed for me tonight."
After four state titles and an undefeated streak that reaches back to the first month of his freshman year, Villalonga had less than nothing to prove.
Except, of course, that one of those 120-plus straight wins wasn't a fluke. In a NHSCA event in Easton, Pa., this past January, Villalonga battled Georgia's Joel Smith, and barely won. On Sunday, the two non-neighbors would do battle once again.
After a scoreless first period, Villalonga started the second on top. He held Smith down for a while, but with about 10 seconds left, Smith spun around and took him down for a 2-0 lead.
Villalonga cut the lead in half with an early escape, then scored his own takedown to take back to the lead. But Smith tied things with an escape, and the grapples fell out of bounds twice.
With 19 seconds left, it was time to do battle one last time. With Villalonga near the edge of the mat, Smith lunged at him. A nano-step ahead, Villalonga grabbed him, slipped behind Smith, and slammed him onto his stomach for the winning points.
"He was a great competitor and a great wrestler," Villalonga said of his opponent, who participated in the ovation Villalonga received for his win. "My coaches always told me that it doesn't matter what level you are, how many matches you've won or lost; when you're out here, you're against the best." One of 14 four-time state titlists at the meet, Villalonga will head to Cornell.
"This is great for exposure," he said of the win, "but in college, it's a whole different game. This will hopefully help me take it to the next level."
Two matches near the end were virtual replicas; just as everyone thought the evening's first overtime would be reached, someone pulled a trick in the single-digit seconds to take home a title.
With the score knotted at two with 10 seconds to go in the third period of the 152 match, Brandon Wilbourn (Miss.) suddenly roared behind Jesse Shanaman (Jersey) to take down a championship.
"I knew I could set him up at any time, so I waited for my perfect opportunity to take him down," Wilbourn said. "People get weak at the end of the period; they start slowing down, thinking it's going to go to overtime. That was my mindset."
After a second-period escape gave Nicholas McDiarmid (Mich.) a 1-0 lead, Matt Dwyer (Ill.) tied it up in the third. With under 15 seconds left in the match, Dwyer grabbed McDiarmid's foot and lifted it into the air.
McDiarmid hopped backward, trying to pull his foot loose, but Dwyer shoved him down for the deciding points.
"When I had his foot up in the air, I had his shoelaces with five seconds left," Dwyer said. "I was asking myself, 'How hard am I willing to try to win this match in the last five seconds?' This was my shot. He kicked out one time, and I just had his toe. I switched off and grabbed his other leg. I was worried that the ref might not give me two, but then I heard the crowd go crazy. There was no way I should be winning the national finals. It's an elite group of people." It just goes to show that, even after taking home two state titles to Hartland High and winning over 120 state matches, some guys still get starstruck about their sport.
Perhaps it was fitting that the event ended with the toughest match. Both Braden Atwood (Ill.) and George scored escapes in the first two periods of 189 competition, but neither could get on the board in the third, and the audience would see its first overtime of the evening.
George started on top in the first extra period, and although Atwood dragged him out of bounds three times, Atwood was unable to escape. The same thing happened in the next period, as George started and ended on the bottom.
Atwood chose to start the third overtime on the bottom. If he escaped, he'd win; if not, George would.
Atwood got to his feet, but George stopped him by grabbing his left leg and pulling him down. Atwood leaned backward, trying for a pin, but time ran out, and George had given the Jersey victory a fitting end.
"This is the end of a great season," said George, carrying his second national championship home to Long Bridge High on the Jersey Shore. "Hats off to (Atwood). He's a great kid and a great wrestler. Either of us could have won on any given day. It was all heart. I trained really hard.
In 125 action, Georgia's T.J. Mitchell beat Tommy Siciliano of Oregon 6-0, while Jesse Delgado (Calif.) defeated Utah's Carson Kuhn 14-6 in the 119 match.
