2/26/2021 other sports Edit

Losses help NC State wrestling's Jakob Camacho continue to evolve

Ryan Tice • TheWolfpackCentral

Editor

NC State 125-pounder Jakob Camacho started last year — his redshirt freshman campaign — with an unexpected loss. He not only ended the season as an ACC champion, but he was named the Most Outstanding Wrestler at the conference championships.

He didn’t get the chance to make national noise at the NCAA Championships, which were canceled by the COVID-19 pandemic, but he had everybody’s attention after dominating a former NCAA finalist for the league’s gold medal at 125 pounds.

There might not be anybody on the team, or really in all of college wrestling, who improved as much as Camacho did last season, his first in the NC State lineup after a 26-3 debut as a redshirting true freshman.

NC State Wolfpack wrestling 125-pounder Jakob Camacho — Camacho has gone 7-1 this year, and enters the ACC Championship as the No. 2 seed. (NC State athletics)

And Camacho — a native from the Wolfpack’s pipeline from Danbury, Conn., that began with Kevin Jack, the program’s current recruiting coordinator who was pulled out of redshirt in 2015 and took the wrestling world by storm when he went from fourth in the ACC to fifth at the NCAA Championships — will be the first to admit it wasn’t all sunshine and wins.

After losing 6-5 in the season opener against Old Dominion, Camacho won his next seven matches. But then, in early December, he went 1-2 at the Cliff Keen Last Vegas Invitation. He did post a major decision victory in the Pack’s final dual of the calendar year, but when 2020 started he had another disappointing tournament performance.

On Jan. 1, he was pinned early in a match that he was winning 6-0 at the Southern Scuffle. He won three consolation bouts to make it to the second day of the event, but then he lost again, this time to an ACC rival, Virginia Tech freshman Sam Latona, eliminating him from a competition he placed third at the year prior when he was redshirting.

A two-week break from competition followed, and Camacho’s record stood at 12-5 overall. This was not how he envisioned his college career going. Doubt began to creep in, and Camacho questioned everything.

Am I getting worse?

Am I even that good?

And the competition was only going to get tougher once conference action began since the ACC boasted two wrestlers among the top 15 nationally at his weight.

Camacho turned to his support system — coaches, teammates and friends — for answers and, more importantly, support.

“What really helped me was their faith in me never dwindled,” he said. “They still had faith I could do what I set out to do in this sport. To have their support when I didn’t even have my own support really opened my eyes.

“As much as those tournaments did hurt — and they stung — they were probably some of the most important times in my wrestling career.”

— Camacho on two disappointing performances during his redshirt freshman year

“… As much as those tournaments did hurt — and they stung — they were probably some of the most important times in my wrestling career.”

Camacho also added another pillar to that support group. Though he had met a few times prior with a sports psychologist, a resource provided by NC State athletics, the meetings became weekly.

That helped Camacho discover if he wanted the results to change, he’d need to make some changes of his own.

“Bad patches happened,” he told himself. “How am I going to respond? Am I going to let this eat at me and snowball into the rest of my season?”

The answer was a resounding no.

“I honed in on my diet, my weight, my training and started living the lifestyle of a champion,” he explained. “[The Scuffle] was my lowest point, and I’m actually grateful for it. Losses hurt, but at the end of the day they’re great learning opportunities and they really show you how you can improve.”

Part of that improvement was Camacho accepting that, according to him, “one of the major keys to success is failure.”

That was a tough lesson to learn for a guy who hates losing — even if it’s horseshoes with friends or video games. But it had to be done in order to realize his ambitions.

“If my goal at the end of the day is becoming a national champion, I needed to live the lifestyle of a national champion,” he said. “That’s how I’ve gone about my life now. I live the life of someone trying to evolve as a person and as a wrestler every day.”

The results were startling.

Camacho suffered from just one loss the remainder of the 2020 regular season, and that was against No. 2 Jack Mueller of Virginia, the aforementioned former NCAA finalist. In the Pack’s 21-18 win over Virginia Tech — a match that many in the wrestling community called the best dual of the year — Camacho notched the first official ranked win of his college career and tied the team score with two matches to go with an on-paper upset of No. 15 Joey Prata.

At the ACC Championships, Camacho got a chance to complete his redemption story, when he was one of the team’s two champions and played a key role in the Wolfpack’s second straight conference title, when he got revenge on Mueller and dominated with an 11-4 win over the previously undefeated grappler.

It was one of the biggest upsets of the college season.

“I was just so excited and eager to prove to myself that I’m back in it, and I can do what I set out to do,” Camacho said of the win. “I was just very proud of being able to turn my season around completely. I knew what I was doing was working.”

Unfortunately, Camacho didn’t get to prove it on a national stage. The NCAA Championships were canceled a few days later and his season of growth came to an abrupt end.

It was undoubtably another low point for Camacho, and there was nothing he could do to change the result this time.

“It was devastating, there were tears shed,” he admitted. “But it was one of those things that reminds you nothing in life is guaranteed, and you just have to be grateful for every moment and opportunity you get.

“Stuff happens in life, you just have to roll with the punches.”

Though Camacho and his teammates have received limited opportunities to wrestle this year, they have relished each of their seven dual matches. He has been ranked as high as second nationally and dominated the majority of his competition.

However, another learning opportunity presented itself to both Camacho and his teammates in a criteria loss — meaning the team score was tied at the end of regulation and it had to go to predetermined tiebreakers — to Virginia Tech.

In that dual, Camacho once again faced Latona — the same wrestler who eliminated him from last year’s Scuffle — but was not able to flip the result and fell in a 7-4 decision that was the deciding match of the evening and came down to the final seconds.

"That was another learning experience and I grew from that," he said. “… It’s always a motivating thing when someone beats you a couple times. You always want your revenge. He’s a great competitor, a great wrestler, but I’m just looking forward to getting another opportunity to compete.”

Camacho doesn’t enter this postseason with any specific goals in his mind. But he is looking forward to showing he has continued to grow in the sport. Whether that’s avenging a loss or now knowing not to take any opportunity to compete for granted, he’s eager to prove those lessons have been learned and that he’ll continue to improve each day.

“It’s all about competing and putting yourself in the best position to win an ACC championship for yourself and for the team, and making a run at NCAAs for your team and yourself,” he said. “… If I can look at the man in the mirror and say I did everything I could and I gave it 100 percent, the results will come and I’ll be happy with the end result.

“My confidence is rooted in my work ethic, working hard and doing the right things. If I can look myself in the mirror at the end of the day and say I gave it everything I had, I’ll be happy and I’ll just continue to evolve and get better.”