ROCK SPRINGS — Championships are not won overnight. Sometimes it takes years of dedication and perseverance to finally reach the pinnacle of success.
For Art Castillo and the Western Wyoming Mustangs, their first-ever NJCAA Wrestling National Championship was 14 years in the making.
“It’s unreal,” said Castillo after the team returned to Rock Springs on Sunday, March 5. “You go back 14 years when I started — not having an office, not a wrestling room, not a weight room. I was part time. I was working fulltime off campus. There were so many challenges and I just had a plan. I bet on myself.
“I started a job fulltime here, so I basically had two fulltime jobs here on campus. I knew this was the path that I needed to go down. I went back and got my master’s degree and wanted to be in this 100%. The administration believed in me and they said, ‘OK,’ and created a position for me in the athletic department and gave us all the tools we need to be successful and we just got the right people on the bus.
“At the end of the day, we brought it home to The Rock and it’s a beautiful thing.”
The Mustangs steamrolled through the competition at the national tournament in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The squad totaled 134 team points, compared to runner-up Pratt Community College from Pratt, Kansas, that totaled 112.5 points.
Although this is the first national championship in Western history, the Mustangs have come quite close in recent years, especially in 2021 when the Mustangs finished second in the country.
In 2006, Western finished fourth at the national tournament. In 2013, they finished eighth. In 2010, they finished 10th. In 2018, they finished fourth again. In 2019, they finished eighth again. In 2020, they finished fifth. In 2021, the placed second. Last year, in 2022, the Mustangs finished fourth.
What separates the 2023 team from the ones that came before them?
Well, Castillo simply said it’s the character of his group and their unwillingness to be discouraged by adversity.
“These guys just enjoy life. They just have fun. They’re life livers. They enjoy wrestling. They enjoy getting better. They receive feedback. They’re brothers. They love each other. They’re always messing around, tickling each other and wrestling around,” Castillo said, thinking about how his wrestlers were full of energy at the airport Sunday while he was worn out and laying on the floor.
“I mean, I am running on empty for sure. I could hear them giggling around, wrestling around and they’re just having fun and enjoying it. But really, that’s their personality. They’ve had that since Day One when they arrived on campus,” Castillo said.
“They’ve had so much adversity. Just about every trip we went on, we had to leave early because of roads. Going to Denver, we had to go through Vernal and then around. Coming back from Powell, we got trapped in Cody. We didn’t make it to the national duels where we had an opportunity to win a national championship. We got stuck out in Dallas and back over in San Francisco. There was just so many obstacles in this team’s way and they just handled it with grace. They would just be like, ‘This is what it is, coach.’
“It kind of set my mind at ease by the way they handled everything. They’re just cool and calm. Some of those things that we thought were road blocks and really kind of frustrating at the time seem to be blessings now when we look back on it. That was a great thing for me to learn as a coach. I think those things are the big separators with just how they handled things, in particular to things that didn’t go their way. Their daily attitude from the time they woke up until the time they got in the practice room.”
The Mustangs as a team won the national title, but different from past years, there was not one individual national champion on the team.
Bridger Ricks (125) took fourth place and became an All-American. Cody Phelps (133) placed third and became an All-American. Joseph Mecham (141) took fourth and became an All-American. Chris Lopez (149) took fourth and became an All-American. Jayden Luttrell (157) took fifth and became an All-American. Holden Andrews (165) was a national qualifier. Christian Smoot (174) took fourth place and became an All-American. Darion Johnson (184) placed second and became an All-American. Talmage Carman (197) finished sixth and became an All-American. Matthew Boone (285) was a national qualifier.
“I want to thank the guys,” Castillo said. “I mean the guys won this. The guys won this. They believed in me. They allowed me to coach them. They received feedback. They believed in everything that we told them, they got after it and they made it happen. “
Castillo said the strategy going into the tournament was making sure the team was getting points on Saturday, the “back side” of the championships.
“It speaks really to how good this team is and how deep they are,” he said. “We talk about how this national tournament is won on the back side. In years past, particularly when we had the 10 All-Americans, we had three sevens and an eight. Those four guys really aren’t scoring any points on Saturday. We had everybody getting through at least the fifth- and sixth-place rounds, so you’re constantly scoring points on the back side. And not only are we advancing, we’re winning in bonus fashion. We were getting a lot of pins that way and just racking up the points.
“I think it was done because these guys all believed. They all were on board and said, ‘We’re bringing this thing home to The Rock.’ We’ve been talking about that and we manifested that. In fact, we made an edit that said ‘NATIONAL CHAMPS’ and we did some other things like that.
“I believe in the laws of attraction and we willed it. I believe that you really, truly have to believe first and then the work begins. That’s this team. They believed and they said, ‘OK, coach. What’s the game plan?’ We put it together for them. Having the best assistant coaches in the country is another weapon. It was beautiful.”
While teams are often judged by wins and losses and the amount of championships, Castillo said that his group of young men are the best in the country.
“Ultimately, in our sport, we’re judged by one weekend in March. You could do a lot of great things, you can have a lot of success in a number of different ways, but ultimately, you’re defined by one weekend in March,” he said. “This national tournament. That was the one thing that was alluding us. I’ve said it a million times, ‘If you could quantify or if you could put a metric in place to judge the type of characters and type of young men that come out of this program, we’d be in the running every year.’ Quite frankly, I think we would be the best when it comes to well-roundedness.
“I think (the national championship) just legitimizes that our system works and that Western Wyoming is the best in the country and that this is the best two-years in the nation. It’s the best and now we can finally say that we are absolutely the best.”
In addition to winning the championship, the Mustangs had eight All-Americans (a total of 32 in four years) and Castillo was named the NJCAA National Coach of the Year, as well as NJCAA Coach of the Tournament.
There are many people who deserve credit and recognition for helping create a path for the Mustangs to win a national title. Castillo said having assistant coaches like Rick Yoak and William Hodges is just “another weapon” Western has at its disposal.
“I would also like to thank our administration and the community and the fans. I would love to thank our wives for the countless hours of being a coach’s wife. And thanks to all those young men that I’ve coached before that got us to this level to let these athletes know that ‘Hey, I can win at Western.’ We’re in this position right now because of those athletes and I’d like to thank all of them as well,” Castillo said.
“Sweetwater County, this one is for all of you!”
