Crown Point’s Orlando Cruz couldn’t believe his eyes when he first walked into a wrestling room.
He was 5 at the time.
“I got to my first practice and was like, ‘What the heck is this?'” Cruz said with a laugh.
His view of wrestling was distorted by the WWE video game he had been playing on his Game Boy.
“I was slamming people with chairs,” he said. “But I was just getting a feel for wrestling then. I’ve grown to like it a lot.”
The senior 182-pounder likes it enough that he has committed to wrestle at Purdue. But before he goes, Cruz has one more shot to win his first individual state championship.
After qualifying for state at 145 as a freshman and finishing fifth at 160 as a sophomore, Cruz went 39-2 at 182 last season. But he fell one win shy of a state title, losing a 4-1 decision to Center Grove senior Drake Buchanan in the final in Indianapolis.
“That was a really painful loss,” he said. “It was something I’d worked so hard and so long for. I wanted to seize that moment under the lights. I envisioned myself as a state champion.”
But Cruz did his best to hide that disappointment later that evening as Crown Point won the team title.
“Being able to win with that team meant a lot to me,” he said. “I had to put my emotions and my selfishness to the side and enjoy that night because that day was going to end and we wouldn’t get that time with that team again.”
Crown Point coach Branden Lorek said Cruz barely had any time to wrestle with those contrasting emotions.
“He’d come off the mats less than an hour before that,” Lorek said. “He didn’t really have time to process all that, but he handled it well. Looking back at some of the pictures, you could tell that he was struggling. It was hard. But we don’t get there without Orlando.”
As Cruz has prepared for this season, he has had an easy source for an extra boost of energy.
“Whenever I feel like I’m lacking motivation, I’ll go watch that match again,” he said. “It makes me emotional, makes me want to put in some extra work.”
Senior 145-pounder Anthony Bahl, who has committed to wrestle at Indiana, has been drilling with Cruz this season and kept using the word “relentless” to describe him.
“He’s on you every second,” Bahl said. “He’s on you every second, keeps the pressure on you and doesn’t take any time off. He’s always there.”
Bahl said that persistent competitiveness is a common theme in the wrestling room as the Bulldogs look to continue their success.
“We’ve had some Frisbee games before practice that can get pretty heated,” Bahl said with a laugh. “It leads into everything: live wrestling, drilling. … You want to be the one working the hardest that everyone follows.”
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It’s a room full of top-ranked wrestlers too. In IndianaMat’s Nov. 28 rankings, four Bulldogs were ranked No. 1 in their weight class: senior Logan Frazier at 126, senior Sam Goin at 160, Cruz at 182 and junior Will Clark at 220.
Cruz is also ranked No. 11 in the nation at 182 by FloWrestling, although he hasn’t let those accolades divert his attention away from his singular focus this season.
“It’s my last time out there to capture the goal I want,” he said. “My frame of mind right now is that I’m willing to do whatever I need to do to get that title. Just living the right lifestyle for the next few months: working out, eating right, getting good sleep and making the most out of every day until state.”
He said all of this with a gallon-size jug of water sitting nearby, a tangible sign of those routines that he believes will carry him to that ultimate prize.
“If I do all of that,” he said, “I’ll get the result that I want.”
Dave Melton is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.