Surrounded by a room full of the best wrestlers in the country, Nick Tarpley is at home.
Tarpley, an 18-year-old from Durango, has seen his own share of success on the mat during the last year. He moved to Colorado Springs in July, 2013, to begin training at the Olympic Training Center, foregoing his senior year at Durango High School to focus on his biggest passion.
Missing out on his last chance to wrestle for a high school state championship, Tarpley made up for it July 22 at the ASICS/Vaughan Junior Nationals where he finished runner-up at 152 pounds in the Greco-Roman bracket. The tournament, held in Fargo, North Dakota, featured some of the best 18-and-under wrestlers in the country, and Tarpley’s bracket wrestled 72 deep.
“I just really like to wrestle, and I’ve figured out a way and a situation for me to wrestle every day,” Tarpley said in a recent phone interview with The Durango Herald. “The junior nationals were great for me, but I think I should’ve won. I didn’t wrestle as well as I should’ve in the finals.”
Tarpley fell to Utah’s Brooks Robinson 2 minutes, 9 seconds into the championship match. Tarpley led the match 4-0, but Robinson worked to cinch up a headlock, and Tarpley couldn’t escape.
“It was a big mistake, because I was winning big. It’s a shame when you are up by four points, and (your) opponent is unconscious, and you end up losing the match,” Tarpley said. “He had a really good head lock, and I knew that going in.”
Tarpley rolled through the first six matches before reaching the semifinals without having a point scored against him or an opponent reaching a third period. Just one year earlier, Tarpley lost two matches and quickly saw his stay at the state tournament come to an end.
Just more than a month before the junior nationals, Tarpley suffered a cracked rib and dislocated shoulder during a match at the FILA Junior World Team Trials in Madison, Wisconsin.
“I didn’t get as much preparation for the nationals as I would’ve liked, but it all worked out fine, and the injury didn’t bother me,” Tarpley said.
The son of Brad and Tracy Tarpley, Nick Tarpley said he first started wrestling in middle school.
“I had gotten in a couple fights, and I decided to try wrestling for fun, and I really enjoyed it,” he said. “It turned out, I was pretty good at it.”
He competed on the DHS team his freshman, sophomore and junior years before finishing high school via online classes from Colorado Springs his senior year.
A coaching change at DHS meant no access to the mat room at the high school, so Tarpley decided to take an opportunity to train at the Olympic Training Center. While still taking online classes through Durango School District 9-R, Tarpley hoped he would be able to wrestle his senior season and get one last chance at a state title. It wasn’t to be, however, as the Colorado High School Activities Association informed Tarpley that November that he would be ineligible after working out at the Olympic Training Center.
“When he made the decision to move and give up his senior year of DHS wrestling, he just had kind of run out of wrestling partners,” said Brad Tarpley, his dad and grappling partner on the mat. “There was an interruption in the program between coaches, and Nick had gotten bigger and better than me and anybody else in town, so it was time to go somewhere else. He had several options, but Colorado Springs was the best way to go. A year later, it turned out to be a perfect decision.”
Brad Tarpley wrestled at DHS and continues to help out in the mat room. He went on to wrestle at the University of Northern Colorado and University of Utah.
Nick Tarpley credited his dad for being his greatest partner and wrestling influence.
“My dad and I would go in before school and wrestle and at lunch and wrestle. We would stay after practice every day together, sometimes up to two hours just wrestling,” Nick Tarpley said. “Nobody in Durango would wrestle with me other than my dad, but I finally outgrew him.”
Former DHS head coach Doug Cuddy began working with Nick Tarpley when he still was fairly new to the sport as a high school freshman. Cuddy said he knew Nick had all the ingredients to become a great wrestler.
“From his freshman to his junior year, he made leaps and bounds. I hadn’t seen anything like it as a high school coach ever, and I’ve been coaching in this sport a long time,” Cuddy said. “He put the work into it, and he lives and breathes it every day.”
Cuddy said he knew since Nick’s freshman season that he could have a bright future in wrestling, and Nick’s second-place finish in Fargo was validation of that belief.
“To be a runner-up at the USA Nationals, that’s not like a local national event like Rocky Mountain Nationals in Denver or something like that, it is a true national event. The best of the best in the country in that age group are there,” Cuddy said. “To be in the finals there is unprecedented for any kid in this area.”
Tarpley has a few more big tournaments on his schedule, including the New York Athletic Club Holiday International Open, a senior-level tournament, as well as another international tournament in January in Cuba. Earlier in 2014, Tarpley won one senior level match April 20 at the Las Vegas/ASICS Open Wrestling Championships.
“It is great to see him get some big results, but for him it’s all for fun. His secret weapon is that its not drudgery in hopes of a result that makes it worth it; Nick just likes wrestling every day,” Brad Tarpley said. “He’s in hog’s heaven getting to train with some of the best wrestlers in the country on a constant basis.”
Nick Tarpley has developed tremendously during the last year under his coach, Momir Petkovic, who won an Olympic gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling in 1976 in Montreal while competing for the former Yugoslavia. Petkovic now is the assistant coach of the U.S. Greco-Roman team.
“Momir is one of the coolest people I’ve ever met, and he’s been great for me,” Nick Tarpley said. “He has flown out to a couple junior tournaments to coach me, and it means a lot.”
Nick Tarpley isn’t sure he will be able to turn his talent into gold the way Petkovic did, but he won’t be bothered if he never does.
“If the by-product of all of this is the Olympics, that’s great. If it doesn’t have anything to do with fame and glory, then that’s OK, too,” Nick Tarpley said. “I’m just happy to get to wrestle every day.”
jlivingston@durangoherald.com
