The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1000643
JULY 2018 ■ 133 BY RYAN TICE N C State redshirt freshman 157-pounder Hayden Hidlay may not have been officially named the ACC Rookie of the Year — despite the league honoring redshirts in other sports, it does not in wrestling — but it's hard to find a wrestler who has had a better debut in league history. Only one ACC freshman has ever fin- ished higher than Hidlay's NCAA runner- up finish, but even 1980 national champion Matt Reiss wasn't as dominant overall as the Pack's newest rookie sensation. The Lewistown, Pa., native entered the NCAA Championships as the only unde- feated freshman nationally and the No. 1 seed at 157 pounds, with a 22-0 mark. He was the ACC's first-ever rookie to earn the top line on the national bracket and was more than deserving of the spot. At the NCAA Championships, he beat a former ACC cham- pion for the third time this year, a two- time All-American from Nebraska and a two-time All-American from Michigan by major decision to make the championship bout. It took the defending champion, redshirt junior Jason Nolf of Penn State — who is 102-4 in college and has lost only once the last two years, when he forfeited due to injury — to stop the precocious grappler, who finished 26-1 with 15 bonus-point victories (winning by eight or more points). "I trained incredibly hard and felt like I had to work my way to the top," Hidlay said. "I never really took into account that I was young or that it was my first year. "I just wanted to jump into the scene and get the ball rolling." He did more than that. After opening the year left out of the top-20 rankings at his weight class by all four major outlets, Hid- lay quickly changed that on his way to the raised mat for the finals in front of 19,776 at Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena and nearly eight million more who watched the NCAA finals on ESPN in mid-March. However, ending his debut with that first loss, by a final score of 6-2, left a sour taste in his mouth. Hidlay has experienced defeat at year-end tournaments throughout his career and even called it "the basis of my career." "I won only one state title in high school, and I lost to a lot of the same guys," he ex- plained. "If I just hung my head on losses, I don't know if I would have had the suc- cess I did. "All throughout my career, I've always reacted to losses the right way, and I think this year was similar." Hidlay was "itching to get back on the mat" after the NCAA Championships and didn't take a break. The defeat provided motivation and exposed weaknesses, and he quickly went to work on fine-turning those few duller points into piercing spears that would fill out his dangerous all-around game. "I don't really like to get hung up on chasing down individuals because this sport is so wild you need to be on your game for everybody," he said. "This year showed me how close I was to that ultimate goal. … I'm right there with the best guys. "It's not like I have to improve majorly — I just have to get maybe one or two per- cent better. Although that's a small percent- age, it takes a long time to get from being really good to the best." Offseason wrestling is different than what is done in college (called folkstyle), with competitors focusing on international styles — but Hidlay looked nearly as dominant as he was in college dur- ing his first-ever senior-level freestyle event in late April, wrestling mostly post-college competitors at the U.S. Open. He entered as the No. 7 seed, but went 4-0 (outscoring foes 36-9) to reach the fi- nals. However, he again lost in the tourna- ment's championship bout — this time by three to Jason Chamberlain, a freestyle veteran who graduated from Boise State in 2013 and won the freestyle division at the Pan American Championships in 2015. The performance qualified Hidlay for the U.S. World Team Trials Challenge Tourna- ment in mid-May. This time, he lost by two to Virginia Tech assistant coach Frank Molinaro, who turns 30 in December and placed fifth at the 2016 Olympics. When he dropped down to the under-23 age level in June, Hidlay was able to show where he stood in comparison to peers his own age. He stormed through the competi- tion with six straight wins — outscoring foes by a combined score of 67-6, includ- ing five shutout technical falls — to reach the championship. In the best-of-three fi- nals, Hidlay took two matches from Ryan Deakin, who won a silver medal at the 2017 Junior World Championships. Hidlay finally was able to end a tour- nament on a win and will look to do the same at the U-23 World Championships in Romania in November. "Finishing a tournament on a loss is never something I like to do," he said. "I hate it. A lot of thoughts that aren't neces- sarily good go through your head the next ROOKIE ATHLETE OF THE YEAR HAYDEN HIDLAY Hidlay became just the second NC State freshman to make the fi- nals of the NCAA Championships, where he was the ACC's first-ever rookie to earn the No. 1 seed. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE MEDIA RELATIONS