Arizona State senior Brian Stith battles Virginia's Beau Fisher on Friday morning at the Virginia Duals in Hampton, Va..

Stith breaks century mark at home

By Jason Bryant
jbryant@intermatwrestle.com

When Thom Ortiz was recruiting then-Cox High School standout Brian Stith, one of the points he mentioned was Arizona State’s presence at the Virginia Duals.

Stith, born and raised in Hampton, was wrestling for the second time as a collegian at the Virginia Duals this weekend at the Hampton Coliseum, but this time around, there was a slight difference.

Stith’s fall over Beau Fisher of Virginia in Saturday morning’s opening round gave the Arizona State senior his 100 th career victory.

“Of all places, this was probably the best place to do it for me,” said Stith on breaking the century mark.

Stith is one of nearly 40 wrestlers that wrestled in the Commonwealth in high school and are now competing on the college mats.

“(Ortiz) promised me one, and he gave me two,” said Stith. “I’m a senior now and it was a great opportunity for me to get in here.”

At the time, Stith’s upset loss to Minnesota reserve Tyler Safratowich in the Sundevils dual against Minnesota was a head-scratcher, but had that not happened, Stith would have won match 100 in Tempe last weekend as Arizona State wrestled Cal State-Fullerton, American and Lehigh.

“He said you know I did that on purpose,” said Ortiz. That wasn’t the case and Ortiz wasn’t quick to take that for what it was worth.

“It was a couple days afterwards before he talked about it,” said Ortiz.

In hindsight, Stith puts the loss in perspective.

“I’ve had a lot of devastating losses over the years,” said Stith. “All they’ve done is make me better and better as the year goes on.”

“But I wasn’t prepared to wrestle and it happened,” he said.

“On Sunday, he terrorized those guys so I think he’s back on track,” said Ortiz. “Back from the holiday and he’s ready to go. His goal is to win a national title.”

Stith doesn’t have the cast of characters that the Sundevils had last year on the way to a the team’s sixth-place finish at the NCAA championships in Oklahoma City.

Gone are All-Americans C.B. Dollaway, Ryan Bader and Cain Velasquez.

Stith finds himself now as the leader of an depleted squad, as attested to by Ortiz, who started eight walk-ons in a 21-19 victory over Virginia in the opening round.

“He’s not the most vocal guy, but we have the routine we go through and you have to do more than the routine we give them and Brian does that,” said Ortiz.

“We drill, he drills 10 minutes more than the other guys,” he said. “The other day, he was one of the last guys drilling. I look at the team, they’re done, he’s still going. I didn’t tell him to do that.”

With the eye-opening loss to Safratowich, Stith now gets back to the grin and regain respect that seems to be lacking from the wrestling community, a lack of respect that typically doesn’t follow two-time All-Americans and a returning runner-up.

“I think he’s very capable of winning, “said Ortiz. “That was his whole goal was winning the national title when he came to Arizona State.”

The homecoming was a change for Stith, who wrestles sparingly on the east coast and isn’t remotely close to where his parents can watch.

“I came in here and saw people I haven’t seen in five years,” he said. “I wrestled in the PWA growing up and I love it.”

InterMat Lead Writer
Jason Bryant