Nick Gwiazdowski is seeking his third NCAA championship. Pat Popolizio is looking to coach his program to its first-ever team title. Together, the Capital Region combination has put North Carolina State wrestling back on the map.
Gwiazdowski and Popolizio — 2011 Duanesburg and 1996 Niskayuna high school graduates, respectively — will be at center stage at the NCAA Division I wrestling championships Thursday through Saturday at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Both are chasing history as their run together winds down, a stretch that started at Binghamton University for the 2011-12 season before the duo moved to N.C. State, when Popolizio was hired to lead the Wolfpack.
“I would never have dreamt of coming here otherwise,” said Gwiazdowski, who is attempting to win his third consecutive 285-pound title and become the first heavyweight to do so since Pittsburgh-Johnstown’s Carlton Haselrig in 1989.
Like he did at Binghamton, Popolizio — a 1996 state champion as a high school wrestler and a three-time NCAA qualifier at Oklahoma State University — has quickly turned around an N.C. State program that last had a winning season in 2006-07 before he took the job in April 2012. After a bumpy first season, Popolizio’s program has now posted three consecutive winning seasons, recently won its first Atlantic Coast Conference championship since 2007 and enters the NCAA championships ranked No. 2 in the country.
“You have to adjust your mentality and your style to what fits the school you’re at,” Popolizio said of his acclimation to moving from Binghamton to N.C. State. “That’s been the biggest thing for me; it’s taken me a little bit of time to realize that.”
That first year at N.C. State, Gwiazdowski had to redshirt after his transfer and only competed at four open tournaments. Since then, Gwiazdowski has gone 106-2 and enters the championships as the favorite to earn his third national title.
In his time with the Wolfpack, Gwiazdowski — who is 29-0 this season — said what has changed the most are the expectations within the program, which had it’s best team finish at the national championships in 1993, when it came in seventh place.
“The biggest thing is the other guys’ desire to now be the best,” said Gwiazdowski, one of eight N.C. State wrestlers heading to nationals. “Everyone comes into college wanting to be a national champion or wanting to be undefeated. It’s easy to say that, but what means a lot is how you train on a daily basis.”
Gwiazdowski credited his coaches — particularly Popolizio and associate head coach Frank Beasley, who was also on Popolizio’s Binghamton staff — for creating that type of environment. The heavyweight, though, played his role in immediately helping to lift N.C. State.
“He already knew the system we ran as a staff, between the training and the mentality we wanted,” Popolizio said. “He already knew a lot of that and it was easier because he was having success for guys to follow his lead. That helped to start the ball rolling.”
Win or lose at the national championships, the 23-year-old Gwiazdowski will continue training after next weekend for April’s U.S. Olympic Team Trials. There, he will have the chance to earn a spot to compete at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
But he’s not thinking about that “or lose” part. Gwiazdowski knows a personal third national title will also push the Wolfpack closer to their program’s first-ever team championship.
“Nothing is impossible,” Gwiazdowski said. “But we’ve got to show up for all three days.”
N.C. State’s meteoric rise in the past few years is proof of that.
“No doubt about that,” Popolizio said. “Most of the time, it’s a 10-year plan to really climb toward a national title. It takes a lot of time for people to do it, but a lot of things came together here all at once — and I can’t complain or be upset about that.”
Categories: College Sports
