From JV to state champion: Northwest’s Joey Gilbertson shows patience can pay off
For three years, Joey Gilbertson was told to wait.
Wait your turn, Northwest wrestling coach Eric Prichard told him, and your time will come.
After toiling away on junior varsity for the past three years, Gilbertson’s time came on Saturday night at Hartman Arena when the Northwest senior won the Class 6A 285-pound championship in an ultimate tiebreaker over Garden City’s Benny Hernandez. Gilbertson finished his senior season with a 35-3 record.
“I definitely had moments where I felt like I wanted to stop wrestling,” Gilbertson said. “Practices were hard and I didn’t feel like I was getting much out of it being on JV. But Prichard always told me that if I waited my turn, then good things would come and that’s exactly what happened.”
That moment when you win a state championship after being on JV last year and the whole crowd chants your name. @Joey50_NW ðŸ†ðŸ’ª pic.twitter.com/BkwZMr1fjo
— Taylor Eldridge (@VKeldridge) February 26, 2017
Ability had never been the issue with Gilbertson. He was relegated to junior varsity because he was stuck behind a talented wrestler in Jared Ross, who was a two-time state qualifier and finished fifth as a senior last season.
Waiting that long for a shot on varsity was difficult, but part of the motivation for Gilbertson, who signed to play football at Kansas, was to stay in shape and improve aspects of his football game. So he decided to continue to wrestle with the goal in mind of making his impact his senior year.
“In an age where kids want that instant gratification, Joey is an exception,” Prichard said. “If they don’t get it right away, then they either quit or they transfer. Joey said, ‘Hey, I’ll my turn’ and when the time came, he fully took advantage of it. It’s pretty cool in this day and age to see what he did.”
Gilbertson was so motivated for this season that he began to ramp up his workouts. He figured not only was he preparing himself for major-college football, but he was also making himself a better wrestler in the process.
“To be a state champion, you’ve got to be able to do more than just the two-hour practice every day,” Prichard said. “You’ve got to go to the Y and do the lifting and the running on top of working hard in practice. Joey did the extra things.”
Those extra things came into play at the state tournament.
On Friday, Gilbertson was able to pin his first two opponents to advance to the semifinals, where he would face the No. 1-ranked wrestler in the division: Manhattan’s Eldon Picou.
In an intense match, Gilbertson was able to score the lone takedown to win a 3-2 decision over Picou to advance to the finals with his former JV coach, Ron Russell, looking on proudly.
“As a JV coach, that’s my job to get kids ready for the varsity level,” Russell said. “I guess in some ways Joey has been validation that I’m doing my job.”
The championship match against Hernandez was mostly defensive, as the match went to overtime tied 1-1. When Gilbertson won the coin toss in overtime, he knew he would get the option to be on bottom if the match went to an ultimate tiebreaker.
Sure enough, each wrestler was able to escape in overtime and the championship was decided by Gilbertson standing up and escaping Hernandez’s grasp in the first 10 seconds of the ultimate tiebreaker.
“You just have to dig deep because both of you are dead tired,” Gilbertson said. “It just comes down to whoever wants it more.”
From junior varsity to state champion, Gilbertson had completed a pretty good February after signing his letter of intent to KU football earlier in the month.
But his favorite part?
The crowd chanting “Joey” as he was mobbed by teammates and fans after his match.
“You never know the feeling of your name being chanted is amazing as it is until it actually happens,” Gilbertson said. “That was really cool.”