Forty years ago, someone began painting a list of Sunnyside’s wrestling Hall of Famers next to the Blue Devils wrestling room. The state championship names still carry clout: Fabian Cota, Thom Ortiz, Eddie Urbano and on and on.
By 1991, they had used all available wall space.
Eight years later, Roman Bravo-Young was born. This is where you can insert your own line:
He was born to be a champion.
He was born to carry on Tucson’s most provocative high school sports dynasty.
“He’s a transcendent talent,” says his coach, Anthony Leon.
On Monday morning, rather than take Labor Day off, the 120-pound Bravo-Young walked under that long-ago list of Hall of Famers. His workout gear was in a backpack that says “USA Wrestling.”
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He and that backpack, supplied to him this summer at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, have been inseparable. His journey turns heads like few other Tucson wrestlers — no others, perhaps? — encompassing 40 years of Sunnyside’s wrestling greatness.
He is, after all, 81-0 in his two varsity seasons at Sunnyside.
Bravo-Young wrestled this summer in New York, Ohio, North Dakota, New Mexico, Colorado. He worked out with former UFC champion Holly Holm. On Monday, he will began the journey of a young man’s lifetime.
“I fly from Arizona to Chicago to Munich — wait through a 10-hour layover — and then fly to Russia,” he says. “I’m ready. I know what I’ve got to do.”
To prepare for the Cadet World Championships in Tbilisi, Georgia — that’s 1,978 miles from Moscow — Bravo-Young was invited to spend last weekend with the varsity wrestling team at Arizona State.
“We simulated what I’ll be running into when I get to Russia,” he says. “It was very helpful.”
Bravo-Young does not talk like someone with stars in his eyes. What other high school junior could spend the weekend with a Pac-12 wrestling team and not gush about it? “They were so cool,” some might say. “Someday I hope to be able to wrestling in college.”
Roman Bravo-Young does not gush. He belongs in that company even now, at 17, and when he chooses a college sometime in 2017, it will likely be the coach that gushes, not the 120-pound wrestler.
“I held my own,” he says, modestly.
Held his own?
“Roman chewed up the college guys for breakfast,” says Leon. “In six matches up there, he outscored the ASU guys 98-3.”
Few arched an eyebrow when Bravo-Young went 43-0 as a Blue Devil freshman in 2014-15 and won the state championship. That’s because he built a mini-legend as a kid wrestler on the club circuit and because he comes from a wrestling family like few others, even for Sunnyside.
His grandfather, Mike Bravo, former head coach at Cholla High School, is his mentor and inspiration, a behind-the-scenes dynamo in Tucson wrestling for decades. Mike’s sons, Willie and Chris, both won state titles at Sunnyside. Roman’s father, Romego Young, who lives in Minnesota and is not an active part of Roman’s life, was a two-time state champion at Sunnyside.
But there’s more: Roman lives with Richard Sanchez, who coached Sunnyside to five consecutive state championships from 1990 to 1994 and has returned to the gym as part of Leon’s staff on a daily basis.
If you have the endorsement of Richard Sanchez, if he is part of your daily approach to wresting, you are a special talent.
How special?
“Richard says it better. He says Roman’s the ‘best ever,’ ” says Leon. “I don’t say that yet because I don’t know it. But Roman does everything the right way.”
It’s not that Bravo-Young is bulletproof. Eleven months ago, he was invited to the national “Who’s No. 1?” championships in Bethlehem, Pa., and ticketed into a feature match with Pennsylvania’s Gavin Teasdale. It went three overtimes; Bravo-Young lost 3-2.
“Worst feeling of my life,” the Sunnyside junior says now. “I made a vow to get better.”
Better? At the U.S. Cadet Championships in Ohio this summer, Bravo-Young won the 120-pound championship by a cumulative, six-match score of 61-2, knocking off elite-level wrestlers from New Jersey, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois and Wisconsin.
But when you ask Bravo-Young what drives him — is it going 170-0 and winning four Arizona state championships, or is it winning a gold medal in Russia on Sept. 18, or making the Olympic team in 2020 or 2024? — he demurs to something else.
“We haven’t won the team state championship at Sunnyside,” he says. “That’s my goal. We’re chasing that title.”
Sunnyside has won 30 state championships dating to 1979; Leon guided the Blue Devils to the 2013 title, but since then Sunnyside has finished No. 2 three years in succession.
Leon, who was a standout wrestler at Catalina High School and later a key contributor at Division II wrestling powerhouse Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri, began charting Roman’s progress when he was 12.
“It’s funny,” Leon remembers, “Roman was at a rival club then, but everybody knew about him. Our goal was to beat Roman. He already had a powerful reputation when he was that young.”
Leon has been with Bravo-Young on every part of his journey the last two years. They were together this summer in Ohio and last fall in Pennsylvania. Leon will fly to Russia, an eight-day trip, to coach him at the world championships.
The admiration from coach to athlete and vice versa, is mutual.
“Roman’s everything you want,” says Leon. “He’s coachable, likable and does what he needs to do in the classroom. He’s a good son to his mom and a good brother to his sister. He’s a good teammate. There’s no (competitive) ceiling as long as he keeps working.”
Work is no problem.
“This is my job,” says Bravo-Young. “It’s pretty sweet when you love your job.”
