Tied one to one, Isaiah Rubio of Montgomery went into overtime with his high level opponent, continuing to wrestle for the championship title. Blood timeout with only twenty seconds left, the referee blew the whistle and time started ticking. Rubio managed to dive under and get a takedown for the pin, sealing his title as the 132 pound champion for the Vikings.
Rubio, team captain of the Viking’s wrestling team and senior at Montgomery, has trained for a very long time in order to get to this point and in his weight class it isn’t an easy task to get to his level of skill and determination. Rubio stated that he wasn’t going to let someone take the title he had worked so hard for in the last few seconds of the close match and he stuck to his word.
“I could just see everything I worked for this whole time and I wasn’t going to let someone take that away from me at the end,” Rubio told interviewers for The Press Democrat newspaper after his match.
Rubio said that he hadn’t been able to perform his best at North Coast Sectionals in the past during his high school career but he was able to put in the work to change that before he graduated. Rubio beat the number two seed in his bracket during the semi-finals before moving on to face De La Salle’s Atridad Feizi, the number one seed for the 132 pound bracket.
The energy during the match was uncontained as Rubio’s teammates cheered him on from the sidelines while he wrestled. When Rubio managed to get the overtime pin the excitement had erupted as their captain went from not just a wrestler but to a NCS champion as well.
Rubio continues to work in the off-season, wrestling harder and now being a part of the national team for how he performed at a huge tournament in Washington State. Ken Coburn, head coach of the Montgomery team and coach of his own separate club, continues to guide Rubio on his elite wrestling path. He is sure to be off to great things after he graduates from Montgomery later this year.