Less than a year after tragic deaths of his mom and stepdad, Frontier's Vincent Gomez vies for state wrestling title
| Thursday, Mar 04 2010 11:07 PM
Last Updated Thursday, Mar 04 2010 11:30 PM
Images
Frontier High wrestlers Alex Gomez and her younger brother, Vincent, after Vincent won Saturday's master's wrestling tournament. Alex is one of the best female high school wrestlers and Vincent, just a freshman, is already among the best in the state.
Vincent Gomez was mobbed by well wishers after he won the 103-pound title at the master's torunament in Lemoore Saturday, but the first to get to him were his sister, Alex, and their grandfather, Tony Plaza. CQ
Vincent's biggest fan, Alex Gomez cheers for her brother as he competes for the 103-pound title at the master's tournament in Lemoore Saturday.
Vincent Gomez (left) had little difficulty defeating Exeter's Arnulfo Olea for the 103-pound championship at the master's tournament in Lemoore Saturday. CQ
![Gomez_1[1].JPG](http://d3vs4613l1445x.cloudfront.net/archive/x1305354371/Gomez-1-1-JPG/g3202580000000000009160554fa212fc3d27c596454cbef4719ba71957.jpg "Gomez_1[1].JPG")
As the wrestlers who would compete in the finals waited in a room to take the mat in Lemoore Saturday night, Vincent Gomez was all business. Just a freshman, he is already among the state's best at 103-pounds. CQ
Vincent Gomez is four days away from the biggest wrestling tournament of his life, and he's bouncing off the wall.
Yes, he's excited about this weekend's CIF State Wrestling Championships, but that's no metaphor: Vincent Gomez literally is bouncing off the walls of Frontier's wrestling room.
He jumps, plants his foot in the mat on the wall and pivots the other way. Now he's clicking his heels together, as he skips out the door, past his sister, Alex, who happens to be a heck of a wrestler herself.
"Vincent!" she screams as his feet come a little too close to her face for comfort. He giggles and she rolls her eyes.
That was Monday, and it's just one example of how Alex and Vincent have made wrestling a labor of love for as long as they can remember.
"I wanted to, but even if I didn't, wrestling would have always been around," Vincent said. "It's in my family. It's a way of life. I can't run from that."
Alex and Vincent's father, Fidencio, built a room in their house with mats on the walls and the floor and started taking them to youth wrestling practice when Alex was 4.
"I was taking my (teenage) nephew to wrestling practice and ... she kind of wanted to wrestle, so I got her going," Fidencio Gomez said. "People told me I was crazy, that at a certain age, I'd have to pull her out. But she became real good real fast."
Vincent was even younger when he started wrestling -- at age 3, Fidencio told organizers he was 4 so he could start early.
"He developed a little passion," Fidencio said. "He was seeing his sister do it, his cousins, and he wanted to wrestle. I just kind of let him go."
Fidencio and his wife at the time, Andrea, made wrestling a lifestyle Alex and Vincent grew to relish -- trips every weekend, Chuck E. Cheese to celebrate big wins, backyard barbecues to celebrate the end of a season.
"Me and my ex-wife laid a path for them," Fidencio said. "Once they got to a certain age, they just kind of followed that path."
But tragedy interrupted best-laid plans.
By high school, Alex and Vincent were living with Andrea and her new husband, Angel Santa Cruz, still living the wrestling dream. Then one day last July, Andrea and Angel were found shot to death in their home.
Alex and Vincent, who have moved back in with their father and his wife, declined to comment on the shooting.
"We still go through a lot of ups and downs," Fidencio Gomez said. "We learned to cope with it. Wrestling's a big part of that, too, of coping with it."
The sport has kept them remarkably focused and positive in the face of adversity.
Today, at 9 a.m., Vincent Gomez enters the state meet as the No. 2-ranked 103-pounder in California. Today, it'd be easy for Gomez to feel pressure. He has a legitimate chance to become a four-time state champion, something that's been done just once in state history.
Today, that would faze your typical 14-year-old. But Vincent is anything but typical.
"He's crazy," Frontier coach Kirk Moore said. "He literally has no fear. He's in here doing backflips off the wall. ... You don't know what he's going to do (in a match). He's not going to be shell-shocked. If Vince loses, it's just because he had a big tournament. To him, the more you set the bar high, he wants to prove to everyone that he's 10 times better than that. I don't see the state meet scaring him. He's 100 percent a big kid who thinks this whole thing is fun."
The other thing Gomez has going for him that most wrestlers don't is a national champion in the family. That'd be big sister Alex.
As a seventh grader, Andrea took seventh-grade Alex to Frontier's summer wrestling camp in 2006 -- the summer before the school had even opened -- and announced that her daughter would be wrestling for Frontier's boys team.
"Who are you?" Moore said.
Alex is two years older than Vincent and has won girls national championships each of the past two years and has been invited to train with the U.S. Olympic team in Colorado Springs, Colo., after she graduates.
She also won Southwest Yosemite League championships with the Frontier boys team each of the past two years until her brother came along to take her spot.
"It was hard for me," Alex said, "because of course I want to be there. But at the same time, I'm proud of him. How can I not be? And it's not like I could be the guy ranked (second) in the state."
Vincent weighed about 70 pounds when he first came to Frontier's youth camp. He came in highly touted and improved rapidly, then translated that success to the high school level. He's 35-1 with a two-point loss to Central Union's Micah Perez early in the season.
"We went to Clovis and did a dual-meet tournament," Moore said, "and we just were talking about, 'We expect big things out of you.' We kind of laid that down. We didn't know how he'd respond to it, but he went up there and just destroyed everyone."
Three months later, he pinned his way through the Central Section Masters meet and is hungry for another shot at eighth-ranked Perez or No. 1 Nahshon Garrett of Chico -- it would come in the state finals.
If he gets there, Vincent said he'll be ready.
"I used to get really nervous, like sick to my stomach," he said. "I didn't really have fun with the sport, but now I'm able to just have fun. I get so calm sometimes. I've gained a lot of confidence throughout the year, and I just can't see myself losing when I look at the guy across the mat."
A championship this weekend would set Gomez on a potential path toward four state titles -- something only Bakersfield High's Darrell Vasquez has done in the history of California wrestling.
"I've wanted that since I was 3 years old," Vincent said. "My dad put that in my head early."
Meanwhile, without the varsity boys season to worry about, Alex went about her own business, winning a girls state title, preparing for the girls national schedule this spring, winning a junior-varsity league title for Frontier and, of course, being Vincent's biggest fan and mentor.
"It's been amazing," Alex said. "I've never been so proud of someone else in my life before."
Moore said it's Alex that helps Vincent stay grounded, letting him have his fun while making sure he doesn't get far off track.
"She is what keeps him grounded," Moore said. "His craziness, his personality, she's the other half that brings him back and says, 'You gotta do your homework. You gotta practice. You gotta do this.' She's taken that big sister role, and she hasn't ran away from it.
"I talked to her last week and said, for the next two years, you're the big sister. And then when you go away to college, I'm going to be the big brother. But it's going to take both of us."
They are roles that will keep Vincent on the wrestling path his mother once set before him. The fact that she's gone won't stop that.
"It's what Andrea wanted," Fidencio Gomez said. This is what her dream was."
That dream continues, even though the old wrestling room is now Alex's bedroom. It will continue this weekend, as Vincent chases a state title. It'll continue this summer, when Alex will be favored to win another national championship. If she does, she'll go to Budapest, Hungary, to compete in the Junior World Championships.
And most of all, that dream continues each day, when they work hard in the wrestling room and laugh and bounce off those walls afterward.
"It's been like that our whole lives," Alex said. "It's like he shines, I shine. He shines, I shine. I'm always in his corner, and he's always right there in my corner, too."
