Finding My Place on the Mat

This season is about more than surviving a college wrestling season. It’s about chasing the feeling of owning it. 

I’m a redshirt freshman at 165 for Nebraska, and every time I step on the mat, I feel a little more at home at this level. The pace, the physicality, the way every guy you face is good. It’s a different world from high school, but week by week, I’ve felt my wrestling grow with it.

I’ve already had to wrestle through some adversity, including a stretch where both my hamstrings cramped up and I could barely move. Stuff like that has actually helped me see where I’m at. I’m learning how to compete when things aren’t perfect, how to adjust, and how to keep attacking anyway.

Last year, it didn’t feel like that. 

I took my share of lumps trying to wrestle up at 174. In the room, I felt fine. I could wrestle with our guys and even do really well against starters. Then I went to my first college open at Daktronics and just got smoked by some dudes.

I remember thinking, What is going on? 

The same guys I could hang with in practice were rolling people in competition.

That’s when it hit me: everything in college is just a little harder, a little faster, a little more physical. There aren’t any easy matches. The “unranked” guy in round one might still be a multiple-time state champ.

At the same time, I’ve got this other wrestling world in my life: Brazil and the international scene. Wrestling for Brazil at World Championships, taking bronze at U20s, traveling overseas with just my coach and maybe one Nebraska coach. It’s a completely different kind of pressure. It’s just you and your flag.

But whether I’m in a Big Ten dual or on the international stage, the goal feels the same right now: to prove that I belong with the best and keep closing the gap on where I want to be.

 

 

 

 

 

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From Claustrophobic Kid to State Champion

If you’d seen me as a little kid, you wouldn’t have guessed wrestling was in my future.

When I was really young, we lived in Dickinson, North Dakota. My dad was working in the oil fields then and we moved around a lot. My parents like to remind me that I was so claustrophobic that I'd freak out and try to escape when someone gave me a hug.

They basically decided, You can’t live your whole life like this, and put me in wrestling. From one extreme to the other.

My first tournament did not go well. I was 6 years old and wrestled this kid who’d been on the mat since he was four and had older brothers who wrestled. He smoked me. I was done. I refused to go back out there, and we left the tournament.

But in the next tournament, I won. And after that I started winning a lot more. Something clicked. I wouldn’t say I got a lot better that first year, but once we moved to Bismarck and I joined MATPAC, things really took off. I had more partners, more structure, more people to chase.

The other big piece was my parents. 

My dad, Leandro, grew up in Brazil on a farm, with no organized sports. My mom, Amber, was homeschooled in a tiny North Dakota town and did band, not athletics. Neither of them wrestled, but they were huge about one thing: if you’re going to do something, you do it to the best of your ability.

I clearly remember one tournament where I made the finals and wrestled scared. I was just intimidated by the other kid. My parents lit me up the whole drive home. Not about winning or losing, but about effort and mindset.

“You don’t wrestle scared. You don’t back down. If you’re going to wrestle, you commit.”

That car ride changed a lot for me. From then on, it was pretty simple: don’t back down, don’t make excuses, and work harder than the guy across from you.

Family, MATPAC, and the North Dakota Grind

When people see me now, they might know the surface-level stuff: five North Dakota state titles, one in-state loss in high school, U20 World bronze, wrestling for Nebraska and Brazil. What they don’t always see is the grind behind it.

North Dakota wrestling is different. We’ve got a rule where high school teams can only leave the state once for competition, so I didn’t see a lot of nationally ranked guys during the season. I wasn’t some big, hyped recruit early on. I wasn’t even ranked nationally until my senior year.

Instead, I was working summer jobs, doing landscaping 40–50 hours a week, then later working at a car wash or mowing lawns. My dad’s philosophy was that every man needs a job. Eventually, my coach convinced him that a scholarship would be worth more than a summer paycheck, but that work mindset never left.

At the same time, I had this huge support system in Bismarck. MATPAC was like a second home. Coaches like Jeff Schumacher, Chad Renner, and Mark Lardy shaped almost everything about how I wrestle and how I carry myself.

Jeff is like the godfather of North Dakota wrestling and an absolute technical wizard. He lives and breathes wrestling technique, and because I’ve always picked up moves fast, I loved learning from him. Chad is the hard-nosed guy that preaches discipline, accountability, pushing us to our limits. He took me under his wing, traveled with me around the country, and still texts me to check in. Mark was our co-head coach in high school and the one always reminding us that wrestling isn’t the only thing that matters. What you do in school, your character, how you treat people; that all counts too.

On top of that, I’ve got my siblings watching everything I do. My older sister never wrestled, but my younger sister, Julia, is on her way to winning six state titles and is ranked nationally. My younger brother, Arthur, is an eighth-grader already wrestling varsity. They’re chasing my records, calling me out, using what I did as a measuring stick and a challenge.

It’s cool to be that example, but it’s also a responsibility. When I go back to run camps at MATPAC, I see little kids who remind me of myself. I know they’re watching. I know they’re paying attention to what I do, not just what I’ve won.

That’s a big part of why I’m so grateful Nebraska noticed me when they did. Coach Snyder actually came to watch someone else at Folkstyle Nationals and I ended up wrestling the guy he was there for and just dominating. That led to a camp invite, and when recruiting opened, Nebraska was one of the first schools in the mix.

I might not have been the most hyped recruit, but I knew I’d found a place that believed in what I could become.

Big Goals, Bigger Perspective

Right now, my goals are pretty clear: I want to be an All-American. 

I want to stand on that podium. 

And by the time I’m done at Nebraska, I want to win a national title.

There’s also this other lane open to me: wrestling for Brazil on the international stage. I’ve already competed at Worlds and won a U20 bronze, and I know the Olympics are a real possibility. I haven’t decided exactly how long I’ll wrestle after college, but I know that door is there if I keep doing things the right way.

At the same time, I’m not putting everything on wrestling. I’m a mechanical engineering major because I’ve always been good at math and science. In high school I barely studied and still got A’s in those classes. College is obviously tougher (last semester I got my first B ever in chemistry), but I’m doing well, and I know that degree is going to matter a lot when wrestling is over.

The way I look at the sport itself has changed, too. When I was younger, I used to treat wrestling like it was life or death. I’d get super nervous before matches. At some point in high school, it clicked: this is just a sport. Win or lose, it’s not the end of the world.

That doesn’t mean I care less. I’m as competitive as ever. I want to win everything I step into. I want to be the guy people are excited to watch, scoring points, turning guys on top, making matches fun.

But seeing wrestling as “just a game” has actually helped me. It keeps me calm. It keeps me from letting one result define who I am. It makes it easier to handle things like cutting weight, changing weight classes, or losing a match when I’m not at my best.

At the end of the day, I’m trying to honor what my parents taught me: do everything to the best of your ability. I want to make them proud, represent Brazil and North Dakota the right way, and be someone those kids back at MATPAC can point to and say, “If he could do it from here, maybe I can, too.”

I’m still early in my college career. I haven’t done nearly everything I want to do yet. But I feel like I’ve finally got my feet under me at this level.

And I’m excited to see how far this can go.

 

 

 

 

 

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