Those huddled around the mat for the final match at Prairie High School last Saturday watched a spectacle unfold.
As the 285-pound finalists at the 3A district tournament muscled on, Hudson’s Bay senior Angel Terry shot a look back to Hudson’s Bay coach Chad Ortiz.
Ortiz motioned for him to go for the half-nelson.
So he did, and it resulted in Terry defeating Mountain View’s Alex Ferruzca in a 5:29 fall, and a first-place finish. Spectators filled the gym with the loudest applause of the afternoon.
The kicker?
It was Terry’s first time ever competitively wrestling.
The win marked the most unexpected string of events in Terry’s athletic career–one that started with joining Bay’s football team as a junior days after moving to Vancouver from Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Pacific Ocean near Guam.
The standout lineman, who signed his national letter of intent to play college football at Central Washington University on Wednesday, had only ever played football until this winter when he decided to come out for the wrestling team to keep up on his conditioning in the offseason.
Ortiz saw enough potential to try to convince Terry to come out for wrestling his junior season.
“I told everybody if he could get his weight down, he would definitely be moving on,” Ortiz said.
When he finally did come out for wrestling a year later, Terry weighed over 300 pounds. In order to qualify for the heaviest weight class — 285 — Terry needed to lose 22 pounds.
Ortiz put him on a low-sugar, high-protein diet to try to shed the weight. He had fruits for breakfast, lean meat and greens throughout the day.
“And salads,” Terry said. “A lot of salads.”
He had to cut out personal favorites like rice and spam.
But cutting that much weight proved to be a challenge for Terry. Each time a weigh-in neared, and he realized he wasn’t going to make weight, he’d get discouraged and go back to his normal eating routine.
The training was grueling. As his conditioning increased, so did the amount of clothes on his back.
“When we practiced, I’d be wearing shorts and a T-shirts, and he’d be wearing shorts, a T-shirt, three shirts over that, two pairs of sweat pants,” said Bay sophomore Malek Mabrouk, who also wrestles at 285. “I felt bad because I’d be doing fine and he’d be struggling to catch his breath because of how hot it was.”
As the season progressed, Terry had still not made weight. Coaches pegged the district meet as the ultimate target. Once Terry made weight, Ortiz knew he’d be a force to reckon with.
“If I was going to lose, I was going to go down fighting,” Terry said after the win on Saturday. “Then I ended up winning. I was shocked.”
Said Mabrouk: “It was pretty impressive. I don’t know if I could cut that much weight in that amount of time. It just showed how much he wanted it.”
Terry’s hard-nosed work ethic never manifested itself on the field or the mat growing up. When Terry was a kid in Northern Mariana, he shied away from sports.
He preferred being a wallflower, hiding in the back of the room. The spotlight that sports puts on the individual athletes — even as a child — didn’t sound appealing. Crowds made him nervous.
That all changed when he started playing football in middle school.
“I wear a helmet so I feel safe,” he said. “When you’re little and you get scared so you hide under blankets–it’s like that.”
He was never the best player on the field (by his own admission), but he found the gridiron comforting.
Before his junior year in high school, his aunt offered to pay for his ticket to Vancouver from Saipan, the largest of the Northern Marianas, and have Terry live with her. He leapt at the opportunity.
Even though he was nervous, he knew it was the decision he had to make.
“I saw my family was struggling,” he said. “I said, OK, yeah, I’ll move. I haven’t gone back. I think there will be more opportunities to help my family up here. It’s one of my biggest reasons to move up here.”
Another reason? He dreamed of playing college football, even though at the beginning, he saw it as a longshot.
When he arrived in Clark County, he was admittedly overweight. Knowing he would be far away from home, he loaded up on “island food”–which he said has Thai, Japanese and Filipino influence–and showed up to football camp out of shape. Consequently, he hardly played his junior season.
His improvement showed in a year’s time. Terry was a team leader on the offensive and defensive line in a senior season when Bay made the postseason. When Central Washington offered him, he was overjoyed.
“I didn’t know if I had the potential to play college football, so it was kind of surprising that schools actually looked at me to play,” Terry said
Terry says he still gets nervous thinking about performing in front of family. He didn’t have any relatives at the meet last week, nor will he Saturday at the 3A regionals at Rogers High School in Spokane, but that’s the way he likes it.
He hasn’t called home yet to Northern Mariana to tell his family about the wrestling success. He doesn’t think they will understand the significance of his wins.
“If I told them and said ‘wrestling,’ they’d be like ‘OK, that’s nice,’ ” he said.
In wrestling, Terry doesn’t have the helmet to zone the crowd out. The spotlight is all on him when he steps onto the mat.
But he’s overcome the anxiousness of performing int front of a crowd. Point to Saturday as proof.
“I don’t worry about it as much,” he said. “I was just concentrating on breathing.”
Terry has a first round bye in Spokane, but will likely face Juanita’s John Nascimento, the top-ranked heavyweight wrestler in state. Bay also sends Angel Castillo at 160-pounds to regionals. Allison Blaine will complete in the girls regional in Aberdeen.
Terry is ready for the challenge.
But before then, he’ll have to lose seven pounds (when asked how he gained seven pounds after the district weigh-in, he smiled and said “the Super Bowl.”).
“Angel seems to thrive on competition,” Ortiz said. “He would rather lose to the No. 1 guy in state than win an easy match.”
