The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/976701
MAY 2018 ■ 35 BY RYAN TICE T here was no reason for Michael Macchiavello to think he could win an NCAA wrestling champi- onship coming out of Sun Valley High School in Monroe, N.C. But he did — and then that dream became an unlikely realization March 17 in Cleveland. It's a long road to the top, goes the old saying, but it was an even longer journey for Macchiavello. The NCAA Wrestling Championships began in 1928, and including Macchiavello just four natives from the state have made the national championship match, with NC State heavyweight Tab Thacker the only previous champion. It's simply not a state that churns out high-level wrestlers. That wasn't the only thing working against Macchiavello. He didn't start to wrestle until eighth grade, and even then it was just half of a season. After two full high school campaigns, he finally qualified for the state championships as a junior and then won a state title the following year. Being a one-time North Carolina state champ meant he was nowhere to be found in the recruiting rankings when he entered college as a preferred walk-on. It was easy for him to be overlooked among the nation- ally ranked recruits, multiple-time state champs and prep All-Americans he signed with at NC State. "I was definitely raw coming into col- lege," he admitted. Raw may be an understatement. Dur- ing Macchiavello's run to the NCAA title, former Wolfpack national champion and teammate Nick Gwiazdowski joked on Twitter, "When this guy showed up in Ra- leigh I don't know if he knew all the rules to wrestling." Big Dreams Most eventual NCAA champions start wrestling well before high school and then do it year-round. They also typically start their college careers with records well above .500. Macchiavello did neither — he played football and soccer throughout high school, then went 11-14 as a college true freshman, although that didn't deter his big dreams. "If you would've asked me my fresh- man year what my goals were, it was to win an NCAA title," he said. "My record definitely didn't say that, but I thought it was possible. "It was just a goal that I had going into college. When you're an athlete, you al- ways want to accomplish whatever the highest thing is you can achieve." The following year, he went 5-6 in dual matches and 9-8 overall before losing the starting spot to a younger teammate. His extreme supply of confidence began to waver. Changes needed to be made. He even thought about making the biggest one possible — giving up the sport and walking on to the football team. Instead, he decided to stick it out on the mat and work even harder towards his goal. "It really motivated me because Nicky Hall, who beat me in the wrestle-off, was a freshman," Macchiavello remembered. "I was like, 'If I'm ever going to wrestle again, I'm going to have to improve a lot.' "I needed to figure some things out, so I spent a lot of time after practice — maybe 10 minutes, nothing crazy, but I did it every single day, and that stuff adds up." He redshirted the following year and put himself through two-a-day workouts, which allowed him to begin to catch up to fellow college wrestlers who had far more experience. He began to thrive in the shadows, away from the bright lights of competition. "Being able to just be on the mat for that amount of time and put in a lot of extra work helped me improve technically," he recalled. "That was the big focus my red- shirt year — it wasn't get stronger or get bigger, it was just improving technically because that's where I was behind." With no national title to chase — though it seemed unlikely at the time, that was still the goal — Macchiavello refocused him- self. He zeroed in on the process, not wins. He became a sponge around the coaching staff, seeking them out for extra technique sessions any chance he could. Something else that happened during his redshirt year was classmate and prac- tice partner Pete Renda placed third at the NCAA Championships. The plan was to flip the two the following year, Macchia- vello would step back into the lineup at 184 pounds while Renda redshirted. "To see him take third and tech his guy [beating him by 15 points], I thought, 'There's no reason why I can't … he just did it,'" Macchiavello remembered. "He was technically more sound than I was, but we went back and forth in practice … it was like iron sharpening iron. "To see him do that made me better and made the goal even more realistic for me, too." Getting Closer The bumps in the road — which Mac- chiavello can look back at now and say he would not change for anything — didn't end when he returned to the lineup. After going 0-10 against ranked foes his first two seasons, he finally broke the skid with a 5-6 mark against top-20 opponents, including a win over No. 5 Zach Zavatsky of Virginia Tech during the regular season. However, Macchiavello, the top seed, was upset by Zavatsky at the ACC Cham- pionships, and then fell one win shy of All- America honors at nationals. He compiled a respectable 26-8 final ledger. He got further than anybody — except himself — would've predicted coming out of high school, but Macchiavello was more motivated than ever to accomplish the goal he had since first stepping foot in Raleigh. "I was the 10 seed [at the NCAA Cham- pionships] and lost in the blood round to the 12 seed, so that really, really stung," he said. "I went into the match like I was pro- tecting something. I thought, 'You got this match, you're going to be an All-American if you just don't mess anything up.' "That came back to bite me. I didn't wrestle the way I normally do; I was very defensive, wasn't trying to score points and the other guy came out on top. That one hurt. In the offseason, I made sure I was doing what I had to do so I could avoid that feeling again." HOMEGROWN HERO Fifth-Year Senior Michael Macchiavello Becomes Just The Second North Carolina Native To Win An NCAA Wrestling Championship Despite never winning an ACC champion- ship, Macchiavello was named the league's Wrestler of the Year after capturing a national title and leading the Wolfpack to a fourth- place team finish at the NCAA Championships, which tied an ACC record and resulted in the school's first team trophy. PHOTO BY KEN MARTIN