When Adrian Peterson tore his ACL and MCL on Christmas Eve 2011, not many people would have predicted he would come back this season and win the MVP award and come nine yards short of breaking Eric Dickerson’s single-season rushing record.
Some NFL analysts referred to Peterson’s body as freakish for recovering from a significant injury so quickly.
Well, North Idaho College wrestler Ryan Zumwalt may be in the same boat.
Zumwalt finished in second place in the 165-pound division at the NJCAA National Tournament in Des Moines, Iowa, Feb. 23 and won the Region 18 title in the same weight class Feb. 9 at Clackamas Community College.
Both these occurrences happened after Zumwalt tore his LCL at last year’s national tournament, which provided him with doubt of wrestling at all this season.
“I definitely didn’t think I was going to wrestle,” Zumwalt said. “I had surgery in August (2012) and I wasn’t able to walk until early September.”
Zumwalt said that he and head coach Pat Whitcomb decided to sit out, especially because they expected freshman Nico Moreno to step up and perform well at the 157-pound weight class.
“He obviously rehabbed it hard in the fall and part of it is laying low in the fall,” Whitcomb said. “You just can’t go 100 percent and that’s not his style.”
Zumwalt said he had been wrestling in practice about three weeks before the Region 18 Tournament. He was not planning on wrestling until about two days before the tournament when Whitcomb asked him if he would wrestle.
“I had no confidence going into it,” Zumwalt said. “I’m not going to lie. I just didn’t want to embarrass myself, honestly, and then winning it was pretty crazy.”
By inserting Zumwalt into the lineup, Whitcomb was forced to bump 165-pound All-American redshirt sophomore Jake Mason out of the starting 10.
Whitcomb, who has been the NIC head wrestling coach for 16 years, said that was “probably the toughest decision I’ve made in coaching.”
“It would be different if Jake wasn’t working hard,” Whitcomb said. “It would be different if Jake wasn’t a great kid, a great character. I can’t say enough about him. That’s what made it harder, just simply came down to what I believed gave the team the best shot to win a national title.”
Zumwalt said he and Mason had been wrestling each other since about the fifth grade. They both graduated from University High School in Spokane Valley.
“That really didn’t set us back I don’t think because he was really mature about it too,” Zumwalt said. “We were both just doing what Coach asked us.”
At nationals, Zumwalt said he had a tough road to get to the championship match with Labette Community College’s Devin Aguirre.
Zumwalt believed his second match was decided by one point and his semifinals match went into overtime.
“Pretty much the only reason why I won (the semifinals match) was I was thinking about my team,” Zumwalt said. “I knew that every point counted, so I just kept going when I was tired.”
By the time he reached the championship round, Zumwalt said he was tired.
“Going into that match I was pretty sore, just fatigued from the tournament, just because I wasn’t used to wrestling that much,” Zumwalt said. “But going into that match I believed that I could win. I started getting my confidence back and I took him (Aguirre) down right off the bat.”
Aguirre ended up beating Zumwalt 11-7.
“I always wanted to be a national champion,” Zumalt said. “I always felt like I was prepared for that but once it actually happened, especially this year I wasn’t even expecting to wrestle, just being in the finals was a sense of accomplishment.”
Whitcomb said Zumwalt’s performance tells a few things about him.
Whitcomb said it shows “number one what kind of competitor he is, number two what kind of an athlete he is and lastly what kind of teammate he is. I think he outperformed probably what he even could have done because he wanted it so bad for his teammates.”
Zumwalt and his team did win the team national championship, sharing the title with Labette. The title came at a bit of a relief for Zumwalt.
“It was kind of confusing at first because when I went into the finals I thought that if I lost that our team wasn’t going to win,” Zumwalt said. “I thought there was some kind of criteria or something that would have given Labette the championship, so I felt a lot of pressure going into it, and then once I found out that we still won and we were able to be co-champions, it was a really good feeling.”
Zumwalt expected nothing less than a team national championship.
“He (Whitcomb) said all throughout the year that we were going to win it and I think we all believed it,” Zumwalt said. “I didn’t have a doubt in my mind that we were going to win it this year.”
Zumwalt plans on taking his wrestling talents to Minnesota’s St. Cloud State University, currently the No. 1 ranked Division II school in the country.
Due to NCAA rules, Zumwalt must earn his associate degree before signing with a university, since he transferred from California State University-Fullerton in 2011, a Division I school.
With an offseason to prepare and improve, Zumwalt may be the favorite to win an individual national championship at the four-year school level.
