NC State wrestling’s Nick Reenan competes for US World Team spot tonight
NC State wrestling had a banner year this winter. The Wolfpack finished the NCAA Championships in March with its first team trophy after a tie for fourth, which also tied the ACC’s best-ever finish at the event.
Despite the season ending months ago, the team is continuing to accomplish firsts — and the latest was done by a guy who didn’t even technically contribute to the success last winter.
On Saturday night, during the Final X (broadcast live on FloWrestling, starting at 6 p.m.), rising redshirt sophomore Nick Reenan will be wrestling for a chance to represent the U.S. at the upcoming World Championships in the fall — during an Olympic year, this would be the team America sends to The Games.
He started as a true freshman in Raleigh and even qualified for the NCAA Championships during the 2016-17 campaign, but redshirted this past season. He posted some notable wins — including one over Virginia Tech All-American Zack Zavatsky — but all of his matches came in open tournaments, where he couldn’t score points for the team in order to preserve a year of eligibility while fifth-year senior All-American Pete Renda started at 184 pounds.
Originally, this spring and summer Reenan — who was always on board with the plan to redshirt — expected to continue focusing on next year’s NCAA Championships. The Olympics and other international competitions are competed in freestyle or Greco-Roman wrestling, two distinct styles both different than what is done in college and called folkstyle.
Reenan entered in his first senior-level freestyle tournament, the Bill Farrell Invitational, in late March and took third place … but, as he was quick to point out to a reporter, there were only five entrants in his bracket.
He “wasn’t too happy” about his lone loss there, a 10-0 defeat against Joe Rau, which lasted just 39 seconds … but also re-focused him.
A month later, Reenan entered the freestyle division at the U.S. Open and again took third. Both times, NC State head wrestling coach Pat Popolizio said the decision to wrestle the youngster in the freestyle tournaments, where the majority of competitors are out of college, came “at the last minute.”
In his first match of the tournament — a 6-2 loss to Richard Perry — Reenan felt everything fall into place despite an unfavorable outcome. During the defeat, he realized he could hang with the big dogs — Perry is a seasoned veteran and experienced international competitor in freestyle.
He remembers right after the loss texting NCSU teammate and 2018 NCAA Champion Michael Macchiavello to say: “That was a match I should’ve won. I just wasn’t prepared mentally.”
Since that loss, Reenan has been on a roll. He rattled off six straight wins, including victories over NCAA All-Americans Pat Downey and T.J. Dudley in which he was so dominant that both ended in the first period, to earn the bronze medal at the U.S. Open and punch his ticket to the World Team Trials Challenge Tournament.
At 86 kilograms, the winner of the U.S. Open and the World Team Trials Challenge Tournament would face off at Final X (a three-part showcase for USA Wrestling) for the right to compete for America at the World Championships.
At the World Team Trials Challenge Tournament, Reenan won his first two matches by a combined score of 21-0 — and then got revenge on Perry in the best-of-three finals with 4-0 and 6-3 decisions to earn the right to face four-time Penn State All-American David Taylor in Final X.
Popolizio even admitted to being a little surprised by Reenan’s vast improvements and quick success on the highest level of wrestling offered in the country — and thinks Reenan may have even surprised himself — but noted he saw the confidence needed to do something like that after Reenan beat Rua early at the Open, returning the favor with a dominant victory.
“His confidence was sky high,” the coach said. “A lot of times that’s all a kid needs is one match to trigger some things.”
Being in the NC State wrestling room also helps. Raleigh has become a breeding ground for grapplers, where teammates push each other to success trying to top each other’s accomplishments. Two-time NCAA Champion Nick Gwiazdowski — who competes in Final X next weekend — used to be ribbed for teammate Kevin Jack placing higher at the NCAA Championships as a true freshman (fifth) than Gwiazdowski did his first year (eighth).
Now, Jack is a three-time All-American — just the fifth in school history — and Gwiazdowski is the reigning world bronze medalist.
Yet, by reaching the best-of-three finals for the starting spot on the U.S. world team, Reenan has accomplished something nobody in NC State history has previously done with college eligibility remaining. He maintains he’s just trying to keep pace with his teammates, both those still in college and the others who have exhausted their eligibility but are still competing for the Wolfpack’s Regional Training Center (RTC), which includes Gwiazdowski, Jack, Macchiavello and others.
“I think it’s just an attitude and mentality that we know we can be the best guys in the country,” Reenan explained. “We have guys in the room that are the best guys in the country. We’re working hard every day, doing the right things and all of that adds up.
“Knowing I’m doing the same things they are just gives me a lot of confidence when I’m wrestling that I can compete at the highest level.”
“It’s gotten contagious,” Popolizio added. “The RTC is finally up and running, so there’s legit, professional guys training here, and [the current college] guys see it. … They see the success that [RTC guys are] having because they’re basically professional athletes, and they mirror that and benefit a great deal from working out with those guys. Reenan is a product of that — working out with Macch, Tommy Gantt, Lee Davis, Timmy McCall — those guys have played a huge real in what he’s been able to accomplish so far.
“That’s what makes a good room — there’s nowhere to go but up and follow those guys’ lead, and that’s what he’s been doing. … That’s what makes a good program, and that’s what we’ve got right now. Those guys are coming in motivated, the class behind them is going to do the same thing, and it’s dangerous.”
Whether Reenan wins or loses Saturday night in State College, the college home of his opponent Taylor, a four-time NCAA finalist and two-time champion/Hodge Trophy winner (wrestling’s Heisman Trophy), he’s officially on the national team — something even Gwiazdowski didn’t do until after graduation. That means Reenan will be at training camps as the best wrestlers in the U.S. prepare for international competition and will likely represent his country at some point in international competition.
He is one of just four grapplers with college eligibility who made the Final X — and there is no doubt the experience will accomplish his only stated goal of preparing as best he can for the 2019 NCAA Championships.
“He’s one of the youngest kids to get there,” Popolizio said. “That experience is extremely valuable because when you go back down to college, the level of wrestling is night and day from that experience.
“The training camps are where I think a lot of growth is made, when you’re training side by side with all those guys. He’s going to be working out with that national team at different times through the year, so that’s as high as it gets for us.”
That doesn’t mean Reenan is settling for second at Final X — even if it seems all prognosticators are picking against him in the event. He admitted to being annoyed by the talk that he doesn’t have a chance, but that's fine with his coach.
“I love it,” Popolizio said. “That’s what’s built our program, and I hope it continues to stay that way. People can keep asking why [success is happening in Raleigh], and I think that’s what gives our guys a chip on their shoulder — they still get overlooked, and it’s good. I think it’s healthy. Those guys take it personal, so I hope it continues to happen to us.”
After a year in the shadows, Reenan is ready for his time in the spotlight.
Despite becoming the first active NC State wrestler to make a world team, he admitted he hasn’t even thought about what that means — he’s just striving to set the bar even higher for his teammates, and the only way to do that is to continue to work.
“He is [zeroed in on 2019 NCAAs already]" Popolizio said. "It goes back to he wants to be the best guy in the room and the bar is set high. That’s what these guys are doing. It’s been good, they feed off each other.”
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